7<? 



PHILOSOPHY; 



or, 



THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 



l'& 



m 



PHILOSOPHY; 



or, 



THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH- 

A TREATISE 
ON FIRST PRINCIPLES, 

MENTAL, PHYSICAL, AND VERBAL. 



By 



JAMES HAIG, M.A., 



OF LINCOLN S INN. 



EmaTrjiLT) ttjs AXqOeiaq* 

, Aristotle. 




t *ry ofCo*., 



too? 



r 



London : 



t( y 



of Vy as hin^° 



*' 



SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 
66, Brook Street, Hanover Square, W. 

1861. 



S3 



m 



[The Right of Translation is Reserved."] 



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NOTICE. 

If any persons should condescend to discuss publicly the 
theory of language developed in this volume, in a manner 
calling for explanation or reply, they will greatly oblige 
the author, in these days of literary deluge, by directing 
his attention to their publications, anonymously or other- 
wise. 



A PREFACE TO BE READ. 



What is Science ? what is Philosophy ? what 
is Truth ? In a work of great reputation and 
ability, we are told that "the discovery of 
universal truths is the proper end of science." 1 
But universal truths can only be expressed 
by means of universal names or general terms. 
The same author, however, early in the same 
work, tells us that these general terms, as 
names, or mere denotatives, "have, strictly 
speaking, no signification." 2 Whence it clearly 
follows, that, according to some of this 
philosopher's words, the proper end of science 

1 Mill's " Logic," ii., p. 119. 2 Ibid., i., p. 36. 



VI PREFACE. 

is the discovery of truths that have, strictly- 
speaking, no signification ! Such, I say, is 
one verbal result of this advanced thinker's 
philosophy. 

But what makes, in my opinion, Mr. Mill's 
Logic and Philosophy more inconsistent, if 
possible, is this, that he tells us, also very 
early in his work, that words " shall always 
be spoken of by him as the names of things 
themselves, and not merely of our ideas of 
things." 1 So that Mr. Mill has two defini- 
tions for his general words, firstly, to mean 
" things themselves," and, secondly, to have, 
" strictly speaking, no signification" ! Hence, 
of course, philosophical and scientific ortho- 
doxy can be made his doxy, or " things them 
selves," and philosophical heterodoxy is, of 
course, his opponent's doxy, or " words with- 
out signification" ! Starting from such satis- 
factory logical principles, as we propose to 

1 " Logic," i., p. 24. 



PREFACE. Vll 

show in the course of this work, Mr. Mill 
clearly proves that all mathematical defini- 
tions have, strictly speaking, no signification, 
and that all mathematicians, from the days 
of Euclid to those of La Place, have been in 
error in the very foundations of their science, 
viz., in the meanings of the words they were 
using ! 

Dr. Whewell, as a mathematician, takes a 
different view of scientific truth, and seems 
to have calmly advised Mr. Mill to study pure 
mathematics ; advice which Mr. Mill assures 
us he has followed, without being in the least 
converted to Dr. Whe well's ideas of scientific 
truth and certainty ! 

Sir John Herschel holds the scales pretty 
evenly between the logician and the mathe- 
matician, but inclines rather to the logician, 
and compliments both sides. He tries to 
satisfy both sides without deciding the ques- 
tion which, he justly says, is as old as the 



Vlll PREFACE. 

days of Plato and Aristotle. 1 This might 
satisfy most people if there were not such 
a word as " Cause," and such a thing as 
"First Cause." Mr. Mill, however, has his 
signification for cause, and so has Dr. 
Whewell ; and they don't in the least agree ! 
and Sir J. Herschel throws up his pen almost 
in despair at "such a state of language," 2 but 
not only leaves the question, whether general 
words are the names of " things themselves," 
or have "no signification," unsettled, but 
continues to compliment Mr. Mill as a 
logician, although he agrees with Dr. Whe- 
well as a moralist ! 

There is, in short, what might be called 
a triangular duel between these three great 
philosophers, three of the most learned and 
able men in England, which would be highly 
ludicrous if it were not saddening, as directly 

1 "Essays," &c, p. 250. 

2 Ibid., p. 674. 



PREFACE. IX 

involving the highest truths of science, phi- 
losophy, and religion ! 

My object in thus alluding to the question 
of the meaning of the word cause, is to show 
by a high and glaring example, still existing 
in the midst of us, how absurd it is to expect 
to settle questions by means of our words till 
we have first settled what our words are in 
scientific truth. 

The first step, therefore, in philosophy is, 
in my opinion, to settle the true scientific 
force or meaning of a general term. The 
solution given in this work, in Chap. IV., 
was first published by me in a forgotten 
pamphlet nearly twenty years ago. It is 
not, therefore, a late thought, or occasioned 
by the philosophical dispute above alluded 
to. But, in truth, universals, abstract words, 
or general terms, have been the battlefield 
of philosophy in all ages, and the battle 
rages as lively as ever whenever man's inner 



X PREFACE. 

convictions are touched by a Word, as, for 
example, by the word " Cause." 

The higher the personal authority for error, 
the more dangerous, of course, it is. No 
higher compliment can be paid to Mr. Mill's 
Logic, than to say, that it has puzzled Sir 
John Herschel, and left him in a state of 
doubt, admiring the logic, but not satisfied 
with the conclusion, though it seems to have 
had no effect on Dr. Whewell. In my 
opinion, all Mr. Mill's paradoxes may be very 
clearly traced to his own dubiety and double 
dealing with abstract terms ; in short, strange 
as it may appear to advanced thinkers and 
admirers of his able writings, to bad logic. 

It may seem arrogant to speak thus un- 
flinchingly on questions which have divided 
the great authors named, but Coleridge has 
justly remarked, that no man can be properly 
called arrogant who is asserting a truth. This 
book is a discussion of Truth, not of authority 



PREFACE. XI 

or esteem ; and these great authorities are all 
at war with one another. But to speak most 
humbly; in the temple of truth, a mere 
labourer may detect a rent in the founda- 
tions of the building overlooked by the great 
architects busy with the acanthus leaves ; or 
a peasant may see both sides of a shield 
about which great knights are doing battle. 
But " I have no toleration, and wish to have 
no toleration for false opinions/' which, in my 
judgment, are only false words, the great 
corrupters of mankind. There is no such 
thing as logical cruelty ; and nothing wrong 
in doing our best to crucify a verbal shuffle. 
But especially when we find the verbal error 
the stronghold of a materialistic philosophy, 
and pointing or leading directly to one or 
other extreme of Atheism or Pantheism, or 
ending in confusion, the moral and intel- 
lectual principles of our nature both com- 
bine to urge us, if possible, to expose 



Xll PREFACE. 

and clear it up. The controversial part of 
this volume, therefore, is rather to call atten- 
tion, and to show the importance of the 
abstract verbal question, which, in these days 
of inductive philosophy, is too often passed 
over as of little or no consequence to truth 
itself, whether scientific, philosophic, or moral 
truth. In my opinion, this abstract verbal 
question lies at the very foundation and root 
of all human truth, and that I hope this 
volume will go some way to establish. In 
short, this Essay is a protest, humble but 
earnest, against that " Scientific dualism " 
which has hitherto ended in total philosophic 
confusion; and is an attempt, the success of 
which the candid and intelligent reader must 
judge, to review " the widest generalization 
of which the human mind is capable." 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface . . . . . v 



Introduction. 

1 . The Confusion of the " Fundamental Antithesis " 

Philosophy . . . . .1 

*2. Mr. Herbert Spencer and the Universal Postulate . 4 
o. Some Knowledge Exists. The Postulate . .11 



Chapter I. — Numbers. 

1. Some Human Knowledge Exists. — Minds, Things, 

Words ; the Factors of Knowledge . .15 

2. Three Classes of Objectors. — The Materialist, the 

Idealist, the Antithesis Philosophers . .18 

3. The Construction of Numbers . . .19 



XIV CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

4. Unity, Equality, Addition, Cavilling . . 22 

5. Mr. Mill, and Numbers in the Abstract . . 24 

6. Abstraction, Induction, Causation, Numbers, &c. . 28 

7. Geometrical Abstractions, Lines, Surfaces . . 32 

8. Numbers the Foundation of all Accurate Know- 

ledge . . . . .36 



Chapter II. — The Three Classes of Objectors. — 
The Intellectual Unity in Trinity. 

1. The Antithesis or Subject + Object Scheme of 

Philosophy . . . . . - 39 

2. Words, not Ideas, Factors in Knowledge . . 42 

3. Fundamental Antithesis founded in Mistaken Intui- 

tions . . . . .44 

4. Materialist and Idealist Objectors, the only Sub- 

stantial Objectors . . . .46 

The Materialist Objection . . .48 

5. The Idealist Objection the same in Substance as the 

Materialist . . . . .50 

6. The Stand-point arrived at, Numbers . .52 

7. Trinity in Unity, the first Manifold . . 54 

8. Epistemology and Ontology inseparable . .61 

Chapter III. — Realism, Idealism, Nominalism. 

1. Mr. Herbert Spencer's Realism . .64 

2. Idealism Contradicted by the Laws of Language . 69 



CONTENTS. XV 

PAGE 

3. Belief of the Real, Knowledge of the Ideal . 72 

4. Mediaeval Realism, Modern Idealism . . 75 

5. True Nominalism . . . .78 

6. The Convention of Language . . .84 



Chapter IV.— The Problem of Philosophy. — Words. 



90 
93 
95 
98 
99 
103 
106 



1. Recapitulation .... 

2. Numbers are General Terms or Universals 

3. Whewell and Mill on Language . 

4. The Logical Result 

5. All General "Words are Numbers 

6. All General Terms are Products . 

7. Denotatives and Connotatives, or Attributives 
Note. — Demonstration that Words are Products 

or functions of Products . . .111 



Chapter V. — Number, Time, and Space. 

1. The Foundations of Verbal Truth . .115 

2. Scientific Truth Requires a New Convention in 

Language . . . . .118 

3. The Certainty of Numbers from the Senses . 124 

4. Number, Space, and Time . . . 126 

5. Time Deducible from our First Assumption . 127 

6. Space Deducible from the First Assumption . 135 

7. The Infinity of Number, Space, and Time •. 1 36 

8. The Certainty of Deduction and Scepticism . 138 



XVI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

9. The Conclusion .... 140 

10. Kant's Forms of Thought . . .143 

11. The Trinity of the Human Mind . . 147 

12. The Scientific Expressions Established . .149 



Chapter VI. — Scientific Truth and Certainty. 

1. Scientific Certainty Numerical . . .155 

2. Certainty by Space, Time, and Numbers. Newton 163 

3. Gravity a Mere Word, not a Reality . . 170 

4. All Scientific Ideas, Words not Realities . .178 



Chapter VII. — Induction, Deduction, Truth. 

1 . Knowledge Begins with Sensations and Naming . 184 

2. No Truth and Certainty from Induction . .187 

3. The Ptolemaic System an Induction . .196 

4. Utility and Truth . . . .199 

5. Dalton's Law Deducible and Necessary. Why? A 

Demonstration of it . . . . 206 



Chapter VIII. — Life and Mind. 

1. An Example of the PRODUCT Hypothesis in 

Verbal Discussion — the Factors of Life . 212 

2. The Factors of the Human Mind— Power, Wisdom, 

Goodness . . . . .225 



CONTENTS, XVll 

Chapter IX. — Law and Cause. 

page 

1. Cause, Plurality of Causes, no Cause at all . 240 

2. A Cause at Law and in Nature . . . 246 

3. The Infra Dig. Argument . . . 255 

4. Pantheistical Objections .... 258 

5. Fundamental Differences and Mr. Mill . .260 

6. "Words and Works ; Efficient and Formal Causes . 263 

7. Sir J. Herschel on Law and Cause, and Induction 

and Deduction .... 274 

8. God in Everything but Evil Minds . . 279 



Chapter X. — Conclusion: Truth and Necessity . 282 



PREFACE TO REISSUE.* 

Before men can think or reason on any 
subject whatever, certain preliminary assump- 
tions are necessary and unavoidable; and if 
men could agree upon what is to be taken for 
granted, no doubt a great number of disputes 
on philosophical subjects would disappear. 
In the first place, as we cannot reason or 
think about nothing, it is clear that the 
reasoner always assumes the Existence of the 
thing about which he proposes to reason. In 
the second place it is clear that he cannot 
propose any question concerning the thing to 
be discussed, without he first assumes the 
possibility of such question. 

Thus certain Existences and Possibilities, 
or, to use the Logical names, Categories 
and Predicables, must always be assumed in 
every discussion before men can possibly think 
or reason together, in any w 7 ay whatever. 

But it is also true that every absolute con- 
clusion assumes and implies that there is 
nothing in the whole universe that can over- 

* Consequent on the failure of the Publishers. In one 
notice of this work, the author has been accused of want of 
courtesy towards those "Deeper Thinkers" whose opinions 
he has attempted to refute. He takes this opportunity of 
expressing his hearty sorrow for any words which could 
possibly offend. But he finds that expressions which he 
looked on rather as an attempt to enliven a dull subject 
with possibly doubtful wit have been mistaken for " self- 
sufficiency and swagger," of which, however, he feels him- 
self innocent. 



XX PREFACE TO REISSUE. 

turn it ; and therefore, in order to arrive at 
any absolute Truth by thinking and reason- 
ing, it is also unavoidably necessary that our 
preliminary assumptions should in some way 
exhaust or embrace the whole Universe of Ex- 
istence. Every one who asserts any thing as 
being absolutely True, has already in fact 
assumed some system of the Universe. 

The common scoff that the Mediaeval school- 
men limited the Universe to the Categories and 
Predicables of Aristotle is in fact a scoff at the 
necessary and fundamental laws of all think- 
ing and reasoning whatever. 

If we are dissatisfied with Aristotle's fun- 
damental assumptions then it becomes our 
duty to suggest better ; for thus only can any 
truth be established by thinking and reason- 
ing. But we must always test the truth of 
our assumptions and conclusions as far as pos- 
sible by observation and experiment. 

In this Book I have assumed that there are 
three, and no more than three, distinct Exis- 
tences in the Universe, viz., Mind, Matter, 
and Language ; the component factors of all 
human Knowledge. I also think that men 
can only discuss two possible kinds of ques- 
tions concerning these three things, viz., their 
States and their Relations. I have also 
attempted to shew that Time, Space, and 
Number, the great measures by which we fix 
our conceptions of the External Universe of 
Matter are respectively particular relations 



PREFACE TO REISSUE. XXI 

of Mind, Matter, and Language. Facts may 
be either States or Relations. But Causes 
and Laws are all Relations. 

But the main object of this Book is to shew 
that all abstract words or names whatever are 
scientifically - speaking products of certain 
Factors ; which factors are the abstract like- 
nesses which the individuals of the class bear 
to each other. And thus I challenge all rea- 
soners upon Abstract Subjects to define their 
words by setting down the list of factors which 
in their opinion go to compose the chief ab- 
stract terms which are in dispute. In short 
my chief object is to propose a new and more 
perfect method of defining abstract words. Of 
this method I give two short examples in 
Chapters VIII. and IX. But in truth until 
some better method of defining our abstract 
words is adopted the discussion of most ab- 
stract philosophical questions seems at pre- 
sent almost waste of time. 

Thus, for example, when a learned author 
writes a Book * as he says " to explain 
Life, Mind, and Society ; in terms of Matter, 
motion and force ;" the question he proposes 
to discuss appears to my mind fundamentally 
absurd and impossible ! The reason is that I 
assume that Matter and Mind are two distinct 
and contradictory things, the Conscious thing 
and the ^conscious thing. He, on the other 
hand, must of necessity assume, as I conceive, 

* Herbert Spencer's " First Principles." 



XX11 PREFACE TO REISSUE. 

that Mind may be evolved from or is a state 
of Matter ; or, in other terms, that motions 
and emotions or the conscious and its contra- 
dictory the unconscious may be one and the 
same thing ! To my mind such reasoning 
appears utterly absurd or impossible. He 
might as well propose to prove that a steam 
engine thinks and reasons when it uses its 
governor; or that a waterfall feels pain and 
grieves whilst pursuing its headlong course ! 

Since the overthrow of the authority of the 
Aristotelian philosophy therefore, it is more 
than ever necessary that each writer should 
state his fundamental assumptions ; what 
are the existences which he assumes to exist, 
the questions which he assumes to be possible. 
The author trusts that the simplicity of the 
method which he has proposed for defining 
abstract Terms by their Component Factors 
will commend itself to the intelligent reader. 

The metaphysical arguments contained in 
this Book may also be expressed in a very few 
words. If we assume Mind and Matter to be 
distinct and different, then Physiology teaches 
us that the impressions of external things on 
our Bodies pass along the microscopic nerves 
of our nervous system into the grey cellular 
matter of the Brain. But we are there as 
far as ever from knowing the great step which 
converts the minute physical vibrations, or 
somethings in our brain, into thoughts or 
emotions or mental principles, into somethings 



PREFACE TO REISSUE. XXlll 

in our minds. We do and can trace the roads 
pursued by external impressions into minute 
infinitesimal somethings which pass along our 
nerves and exist in our brains. There we 
individually know that they are converted into 
thoughts, into mental Emotions or Judg- 
ments ; and to these thoughts we give names 
and manufacture words for that purpose, 
and send them forth along our outcarrying 
nerves to our fellow-men ; which words we 
call the names of the things which we assume 
to exist and which have produced the ori- 
ginal impressions on our bodies. But as 
the nervous vibrations as well as the mental 
thoughts or emotions of each man can be 
known only to himself, the only things which 
men have in common in this whole process 
which can be compared together are the ulti- 
mate Human * Words which they make or 
adopt, and these words are therefore the only 
component materials of all Human reasoning 
and knowledge. Men cannot even speak of or 
discuss other men's thoughts or any exter- 
nal things in nature ; but they can discuss only 
their own or their neighbour's words for their 
private unknown thoughts of things. Thoughts 
arid Things themselves are by man's nature 
effectually and altogether removed from all 
human discussion. We can reason, but only 
with words and about words. But our words, 
if truly framed, may teach other men to think 
rightly about the thoughts and things which 



XXIV PREFACE TO REISSUE. 

we assume to exist. If the words for our 
fundamental assumptions are consistent with 
Truth, and if our conclusions are strictly 
deduced by accurate reasoning from those 
fundamental assumptions then our deductions 
are Truths. Induction may often assist us in 
guessing at new truths, but never can give us 
any absolute truth whatever. We make by 
induction only probable guesses from which 
we may sometimes frame new fundamental 
assumptions, just, for example, as Dalton's 
observation of definite proportions in chemis- 
try has led to the atomic theory of matter, 
and Dalton's Law has become a necessary and 
absolute Truth, founded on the word Atom or 
ultimate particle (p. 206). 

In every human conception whatever there 
are three Factors acting in unison together. 
The Thing or object producing nervous action 
or emotion in the Body. The Mind or subject 
passively recipient of the action of the object 
and actively emitting the Word expressing 
the conception — and the word itself which 
embodies the Mental Conception of the Thing 
and which Word is actively capable of trans- 
mitting that Conception to other minds. 

These three form a tri-Unity, a Unity in 
Trinity, each actively engaged in creating 
each and every Human Conception. If this 
be true of every conception, it is of course 
true of all Human knowledge Therefore it 
is true of self-knowledge and of the Concep- 



PREFACE TO REISSUE. XXV 

tion of Spiritual Existence ; it is true of the 
Highest Conception man can form, i.e., of the 
Conception of the Deity as a purified Concep- 
tion of the Highest Human self-consciousness, 
the dimmed Image of its Maker. Thus 
the doctrine of the Trinity, as revealed in 
Christianity, is shewn to be a necessary Truth 
deduced from the simple assumption that man 
is a Spirit enclosed in a Body and capable of 
communication with other minds by means 
of Words, symbols, or Language. In fact, 
the assumption which all men must make that 
the Universe consists of Mind, Matter, and 
Language, or of Spirits, Bodies, and Words, 
involves this deep and mysterious doctrinal 
Truth — the Unity in Trinity and Trinity in 
Unity of man's Conception of the supreme 
Godhead ! Thus our knowledge of the states 
and relations of things and persons may be 
continually increasing, but yet we have no ab- 
solute truths except verbal truths. Human 
Words are the only result of all our reasoning, 
Words, perhaps, expressing deeper views of 
the nature and constitution of the Universe ! 
These Words which thus pass and repass 
along men's nervous systems and are elabo- 
rated in men's Brains are as it were the 
material bridges between mind and mind and 
rule all mankind by their influence. Their 
importance can hardly be over-estimated, but 
metaphysical discussion is not and cannot be 
a discussion about the minds and mental 



XXVI 



PREFACE TO REISSUE. 



things of different men which we cannot in 
any wise compare, but only about men's words 
which we can and do compare. Thus we are 
brought again to view the importance of 
adopting some new and better method of 
defining our Words than has hitherto existed, 
and more especially in all Metaphysical and 
Philosophical discussion. 



Knowledge 


is 


The Human Mind 


is 


Matter 


is 


Man 


is 


Infinite Number 


is 


Infinite Time 


is 


Infinite Space 


is 



Definitions of Words used in this Work. 

All Things or the Universe The product of Mind, 

of Existence is Matter, and Language. 

Things are of three kinds, Mental, Physical, and Verbal. 
Questions are of two kinds only, viz., States and Relations. 

Mind, Things, and Words. 
Emotion, Intellect, & Will, 
each of which is a Mind. 
Force, Mass, and Form. 
Body, Soul, and Spirit. 
Unity and Infinity. 
Number and Mind. 
Number, Negative Matter, 
and Time. 

Life is Matter, Organisation, Ab- 

sorption, Assimilation, 
Secretion, Reproduction 
for Vegetable Life, 
Add Sensation for a Zoo* 

phyte, 
Add Nervous Action or In- 
telligence for Animal 
Life, 
Add Mind or Spirit for 
Human Life. 
Law is Words and Order. 

Cause is Things, Action, and Mind. 

Effect is Things and Passion. 



PHILOSOPHY ; 



THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 



INTRODUCTION. 



(1.) The Confusion of the "Fundamental 
Antithesis" Philosophy. — " The labours of 
philosophers up to the present time," wrote 
Kant, eighty years ago, " have aimed at 
erecting an edifice of philosophy, but to my 
eye this edifice appears in a very ruinous con- 
dition." If he could now look down upon 
what has followed his own able attempt to 
show that the highest philosophical wisdom 
must end in the deepest humility, or, as he 
expresses it, " That in respect to the essential 
ends of human nature we cannot advance 

B 



2 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [Int., § 1, 

further, with the help of the highest philo- 
sophy, than under the guidance which nature 
has vouchsafed to the meanest understanding," 
what would he have now said to the con- 
fusion, worse confounded, which later philo- 
sophers have built on those Kantian words 
and doctrines that, as he thought and wrote, 
were sufficient " to settle and conclude all 
possible questions of philosophy " ? 

Who can describe the wordy conflicts that 
have been carried on since Kant's day about 
" the one and the manifold," " the subjective 
and objective, 5 ' " the pure reason and empi- 
rical reason," " intuitions and representa- 
tions," " ideas, conceptions, perceptions, and 
intuitions," the "ego and non ego," "thoughts 
and things," "facts and theories," "necessary 
and experiential truths," " the possibility of 
purely thinking the unconditioned," " the two 
unities that are one unity," or, in short, " the 
fundamental antithesis of all Philosophy " ? 
Has Kant's most able and well meant attempt 
really settled anything that he thought he 
had settled ? or has his Philosophy, and its 
natural or unnatural developments, tended to 



Int., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 3 

satisfactorily answer any of those questions 
which he fondly hoped he had found the 
means to set at rest for ever ? 

The simple fact remains, that Kant flung 
into the seething caldron of European Philo- 
sophy a number of new woi'ds, about which 
has been carried on ever since an unceasing 
warfare. The work that Kant proposed to 
do still remains to be done. Faith and 
Reason have neither gained much nor lost 
much by all the weapons that have been 
thrown, and " the edifice of Philosophy " is 
still as ruinous as ever. 

In such an embroiled arena, what is wanted 
is not a glove of defiance, but a dove of peace. 
If, therefore, we seem to plunge into the 
middle of the philosophical field, it is not to 
handle the verbal weapons which have been 
hitherto used, but rather to show that those 
weapons, their words, have not hitherto been 
in any way prepared for the contest. In 
truth, most ordinary mortals rather approve 
of the Scotchman's definition of metaphysics, 
" Just twa men havering ; the ane does na 
ken what the ither says ; and the ither does 

B 2 



4 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [Int., § 2. 

na ken what he says himseP ! " Most of those 
who look on, feel almost like that Turkish cadi 
who determined the cause by ordering both 
parties to be beaten, and confiscating the 
subject matter in dispute, 

In fact, hopeless as the attempt may seem, 
and powerless as we may be to enforce the 
judgment, the Turk's decision is something 
like what we propose to do in the following 
pages. We desire, if possible, to silence all 
parties amongst modern antithetical philoso- 
phers, and to confiscate, by suppressing, the 
antithesis about which they have carried on 
the warfare. We affirm that there is no 
fundamental antithesis in the human mind or 
in human knowledge. We assert that the 
doctrine of a couple can give as little cer- 
tainty or equilibrium in mental, as in mecha- 
nical philosophy, and that it can only continue, 
as it has hitherto proceeded, in never ending 
and inconclusive reasoning in a circle. 

(2.) Mr. Herbert Spencer and the Uni- 
versal Postulate. w Any witness almost is com- 
petent and sufficient to testify to a state of 
confusion in which he has taken an active 



Int., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH- 5 

part, however unfit or unable the witness 
may be either to state the cause or to suggest 
the true remedy. Let us summon first " an 
advanced thinker," 1 the latest self-styled 
realist in England. This philosopher de- 
mands a datum, a " universal postulate;" and 
thinks that its absolute necessity is proved 
by " the utter confusion of current opinion 
on all fundamental questions." He says that 
" this universal postulate must be found 
before the endless disputes can be brought to 
an end ;" and insists that the possibility of 
defending theories so utterly at variance with 
univeral belief as idealism and scepticism, and 
the doctrines of Fichte and Hegel, implies 
one of two things— " some fundamental flaw 
in the modes of argument," or, " that all 
thinking is fallacious*" 

This witness, who is himself a philosophical 

1 "Principles of Psychology," p. 5, et seq. The last 
"Westminster," July, 1860, p. 172, calls Mr. Spencer "a 
severe and stoical thinker." These advanced thinkers pro* 
voke and encourage one another like schoolboys taking a 
cold plunge, a Now, brave lads, who'll be overhead first ?" 
It would be amusing, if it were not painful, when one re- 
members that the subject involves, in substance, Eternity 
and Salvation, the immortality of the human mind, -the 
resurrection from the dead ! 



6 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [Int., § 2. 

doctor to the extent of an octavo volume of 
620 pages, proposes a cure for the prevailing 
disease in the body politic of philosophy, 
which is the most ludicrous possible. This 
cure is a panacea of his own composing, a 
dose to be henceforth swallowed by all philoso- 
phers, in the shape of "Mr. Spencer's universal 
postulate." This postulate complicates and 
involves nothing less than the seven following 
dubious words, ideas, notions, intuitions, or, 
as Mr. Mill might say, " names of tilings 
themselves" that have, " strictly speaking, no 
signification," viz.: 1st. Belief, in two mean- 
ings, not saying which ! 2nd, Proof ! 3rd, 
Inconceivability ! 4th, Negation ! 5th, In- 
variability ! 6th, Existence! 7th and last, 
a word which, he says, if all the other six are 
granted, may mean what we like, i. e., " any- 
thing it may," viz., Truth ! There is a col- 
lection of dubious words, or ideas, or things, 
for a rational and deliberative being to bolt 
affirmatively in one sentence as a Postulate ! 
But listen only to the consequences threatened 
by the doctor in case our philosophical sto- 
mach should refuse to submit to such an awful 



Int., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 7 

administration by this " advanced thinker." 
He tells us that we are all under " the inex- 
orable necessity" of granting this universal 
postulate (i. e., of swallowing a grammatical 
hash involving all those seven dubious words 
or things, almost any one of which might well 
employ any man for half his philosophical 
life before he could be certain of its true and 
exact meaning) as " our only guarantee" for 
" the reality of our consciousness, of our sen- 
sations, and of our personal existence !" nay, 
more, if possible, " our only guarantee" for 
the truth and certainty " of any axiom," or 
" of any step in any demonstration !" To do 
this realist philosopher real and substantial 
justice, notwithstanding that my personal 
existence has been thus put in jeopardy, and 
that my consciousness has been left without 
any guarantee, according to the philosophy of 
this " advanced thinker," I subjoin in a note 
his own actual words, so that all my readers 
may realize their own consciousness and per- 
sonal existence, by taking and adopting, if 
they can, i.e., swallowing, this universal pos- 
tulate in any intelligible sense whatever. 



8 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Int., §2. 

I would merely observe with all humility, 
that in Euclid's school, a postulate always 
ranked with axioms, or supposed self-evident 
truths ; and in those early days, before ad- 
vanced thinking had gone ahead so far back- 
wards, it meant what no reasonable person 
could deny d priori. It is absurd to demand, 
at the point of your logical or philosophical 
spear, assent to a proposition involving six or 
seven doubtful words, which any man with 
half a grain of logic can pull to tatters. But 
the absurdity is infinitely greater when the 
philosopher, the advanced thinker, avowedly 
has two senses for one word, and either cannot, 
or does not, tell his patient or his disciple 
in which sense or in what meaning the word 
is to be taken. This indeed is " severe and 
stoical" logic; this is the climax of advanced 
thinking. 1 The wisest of men are liable to be 

1 Mr. Spencer says, note, p. 30, in reference to a passage 
in the text, " I have given the word Belief two parallel 
meanings ; using it in the one case to describe the persistence 
of a state of consciousness, and in the other a persistent state 
of consciousness. The context [always a refuge when a man 
cannot explain himself] will in each case show in which 
sense it is to be understood." Again he says, at p. 31 : " Mean 
what we may by the word Truth, we have no choice but to 
hold that a Belief which is proved by the inconceivableness 



Int., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OP TttUtH. 9 

misled by a word, and unwittingly to find 
themselves defending what is indefensible. 
The proper course is then to correct the words 
and the thoughts they represent. But when 
an author avowedly uses one word in two 
senses in the same passage of his work, he 
thereby confesses himself in such a state oi 
dubiety and uncertainty on the subject of that 

of its negation to invariably exist, is true. We have seen 
that this is the assumption on which every conclusion 
whatever ultimately rests. We have no other guarantee 
for the reality of consciousness, of sensations, of personal 
existence ; we have no other guarantee for any axiom j 
we have no other guarantee for any step in a demon- 
stration. Hence, as being taken for granted in every act 
of the understanding, it must be regarded as the Uni- 
versal Postulate" Here we are not told in which of Mr. 
Spencer's two meanings the word Belief is to be taken in 
the postulate itself. Many or most rational Englishmen 
would deny that Belief properly means either a persistent 
state, or persistence in any state of consciousness. The 
doctrine of realism is the existence of things independent of 
consciousness, and according to this doctrine, the Belief [the 
thing believed] should therefore exist whether the believer 
is conscious or unconscious. Thus this realist contradicts 
his own doctrine in the very meaning of the word Belief, 
and sets out on his philosophical career on behalf of realism, 
not only with an unmeaning postulate, but with a clear 
self-contradiction. In fact, it is impossible to tell from Mr. 
Spencer's words, whether this "realist" does or does not 
believe that the sun exists at noonday, when he, Mr. 
Spencer, goes down to the cellar, or shuts his eyes, and does 
not feel the sun's rays. See the whole passage about " the 
Sun," p. 29. 

B 5 



10 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Int., § 2. 

word, that he becomes entitled not to refuta- 
tion, but to condemnation. However deficient 
a man may be in his powers of invention to 
make a new word, yet he can always put a 
blot or a blur, some mark or other, over the 
word in its second meaning. Now, an 
Englishman who cannot use the word belief 
without getting confused and involved with 
the two meanings to the word — the act of 
believing, and the thing believed — evidently 
must have a belief with a blur or a blot ; and 
he is not entitled to refutation, for his belief 
refutes itself by its incoherency. Mr. Herbert 
Spencer's belief is, on his own showing, of 
this kind. It has a blur in one or both 
senses. 

Indeed, it generally happens that men who 
are in a state of doubt about a word, have no 
clear meaning to it at all, or not such a 
meaning as their fellow men can at all accept. 
So it is with Mr. Spencer's belief. His belief 
is such as ceases with consciousness, whereas 
Englishmen in general mean by belief some- 
thing that would remain the same even if 
they became unconscious. They mean a thing 



Int., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 

believed, as well as the mere act of believing. 
They mean a true thought, as well as the 
mere trowing of it* They mean a self- 
existent, self-coherent truth. They mean 
something more than the confused and shallow 
drivel of advanced thinkers on the subject of 
belief. 

(3.) Some Knowledge exists. The Postu- 
late. — The confusion and mutual polemic of 
the warring systems of philosophy is, how- 
ever, if possible, greater than when Kant 
described it as the warfare of shadows, like 
that of the Heroes of the Valhalla. Those 
who have succeeded as well as those who 
preceded Kant, hew each other in pieces 
only to be in a twinkling reunited, again to 
amuse themselves and the world which lauohs 
at them in other equally fatal, but bloodless 
and indecisive contests. Nor is the absurdity 
lessened when a philosopher like Sir William 
Hamilton arises, full of learning and out-of- 
the-way reading, who undertakes to raise or 
ruin philosophical reputations by distributing 
the palms for originality in nonsense; or 
awarding the penalties due for the literary 



12 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Int., §3. 

" theft " of the like valuable philosophical 
commodity. He has resuscitated Reid and 
overwhelmed Professors Brown and Young 
by delivering them to the avengers of Philo- 
sophical " theft." He himself, along with his 
distinguished disciple Mansel, now awaits the 
hero, qualified by sufficient knowledge of 
mathematics, to enter the groves of Academus, 
and to enforce the rule of Plato, and con- 
demn them to retire, and carry their philo- 
sophy of " the unconditioned " to those who 
are wholly ignorant of the mathematics of 
the infinite. 1 Originality is great, but Truth 

1 Vide Hamilton's Led. by Mansel and Veitch f vol. ii , 
Appendix, p. 527, for " list of contradictions proving the 
psychological theory of the conditioned," which betrays 
complete ignorance of the mathematics of infinites. It is 
there assumed as self-evident what every mathematician 
knows to be false, viz., that " nothing can be greater than 
infinite :" that " one infinity cannot be larger than another;" 
that " an infinite number of quantities cannot make a finite 
quantity ;" that " an infinite series of successive protensions 
can never be ended;" and so on : in short, it is clear, according 
to such reasoning, that Zeno, the ancient philosopher or so- 
phist, was right, and that the greyhound can never overtake 
the hare, and Achilles could never overtake the tortoise ! 
Plato, informed of modern mathematics, would certainly 
have rusticated for a term Sir William and his disciple till 
they had studied mathematics more deeply. Mr. Mansel 
adopts his master's ignorance of mathematics, and speaks of 
u ihe absurdity of a greater than an infinite." — Bampton 



Int., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OP TRUTH. 13 

is greater. We do not much want origin- 
ality on subjects on which we can learn pro- 
bably as much, or even more, from Plato and 
Aristotle, than we can from most of their 
successors. We want a Postulate indeed, and 
accurate reasoning thereon, for we want Truth. 
We want a point from which we may move 
the world of ignorance and folly. But our 
demand, our Postulate, must be something 
which everybody believes, and which nobody 
can deny who takes the trouble to reason 
at all. It must be self-evident to every one, 
or it cannot be a universal postulate. 

We all believe, we all assume in the mere 
act of reasoning, that something exists; some- 
thing worth our trouble to discover, either to 
establish or to refute. That something, that 

Lect.^Note II, Led. iii., and Note 32 to Led. ii. If these 
philosopers had ever read Newton's " Principia," even as far 
as Lemma XI., they would have found a series of infinites 
demonstrated each infinitely greater than the preceding one. 
But this is evident also from common arithmetic, for in the 
two infinite series 1, 2, 3, 4, to cc and 1, 4, 9, 16, to cc, the 
second infinite is the square of the first, and therefore infi- 
nitely greater than the first infinite, and there is no kind 
of absurdity in supposing one infinite time infinitely less 
than another infinite time. It depends entirely on how the 
time passes. 



1 4 PHILOSOPHY ; Oft, [Int., § 3. 

Unknown Something, for the present, we must 
call knowledge, worth man's while to search 
for by reason, whether it turn out in the end 
to be positive Truth, or an equally positive 
certainty, the certainty of nothing. We 
therefore only demand what all assume, and 
none can deny, that some knowledge exists. 
That shall be our only postulate, and none 
can refuse to grant it. Knowledge does exist, 
and must be sought for in the spirit of truth, 
with humility. 



C. i., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 5 



CHAPTER I. 



NUMBERS. 



(1.) Some human knowledge exists, — ■ 
Minds, Things, Words. Those who dare to 
deny the existence of knowledge, contradict 
themselves ; for they assert their knowledge 
that no knowledge exists ; which is absurd 
and self-contradictory. Therefore, we only 
assume what every rational being who speaks 
must grant. The Pyrrhonist must hold his 
tongue, or contradict himself in each asser- 
tion of his doubt. 

Not only, however, in answering cavillers 
and sceptics, whether on philosophy, science, 
or matter of opinion, but even, also, for the 
satisfaction of our own minds on those sub- 



1 6 PHILOSOPHY ; Oft, [C. t, § L 

jects on which we believe our opinions to be 
most fixed* it is desirable sometimes to test 
the accuracy of our thoughts by tracing them 
to their very first and fundamental elements, 
and, if possible, to demonstrate that all our 
knowledge hangs by links, none of which can 
be broken, from some truth which cannot be 
denied, except, indeed, by those who are not 
ashamed to contradict themselves, or to main- 
tain the greatest of all absurdities, that con- 
tradictory propositions may both be true. 
With such we cannot argue; We can only 
reason with the reasonable. Now, the very 
meaning of a postulate or fundamental prin- 
ciple is, that it is such as no reasonable being 
can deny. To call a complicated proposition, 
involving five or six terms of philosophy or 
science doubtful in their meanings, a postu- 
late, is a burlesque upon science, and a con- 
tradiction iii terms, worthy only of men whose 
thoughts are altogether in confusion ! We 
have therefore been careful to assume nothing 
which any rational being can deny. For the 
attempt to reason at all, or to seek for truth 
by discussion, assumes not only the possi- 



C. i., § L] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH* 1 7 

bility, but the fact, the full belief of know- 
ledge existing amongst mankind, even though 
it may turn out to be the knowledge that 
nothing can be known, a blank negation. 

The existence of knowledge, therefore, 
being admitted, three things, of necessity, 
follow. 

1st. That a thing able to know exists, or a 
mind. 

2nd. That a thing fit to be known exists, 
or a thing. 

3rd. That a word to express the knowledge 
exists, or a word or sign. 

Men cannot possibly have any knowledge 
whatever without the existence of minds, 
words, and things, to be known ; or assuming 
the fewest possible existences, according to 
what is called the law of parcimony, the exist- 
ence of knowledge entitles us to assume the 
existence of three things as necessarily proved 
thereby, which things, for the present, we call 
a mind, a thing, and a word. 

These three things, observe, are not parts of 
knowledge, but factors of knowledge. The 
mind, the thing, or the word, are not parts, 



1 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. i., § 2. 

but in some manner mutually act and react, 
and are complicated together, so as to com- 
pound or make up what we all call know- 
ledge. They are factors, not parts. This is 
the true and scientific name for them, as we 
shall hereafter prove more strictly, post 
Chapter IV. 

(2.) Three classes of objectors. — There 
are three classes of objectors to this truth. 

1st. The dogmatical materialist, who says 
knowledge implies only one thing besides 
words, viz., matter, which knows itself, and 
the residue of matter with or without cer- 
tainty. 

2nd. The dogmatical idealist, who also says 
knowledge implies only one thing besides 
words, viz., mind, and that the world is a 
mental illusion permitted by the One first 
Mind to educate other minds. 

3rd. The ordinary antithesis, or object + sub- 
ject philosophers, who have no very fixed 
opinions about words, or the part they take 
in knowledge and philosophy. Their lan- 
guage sometimes admits and sometimes denies 
the truth we are asserting, viz., that know- 



C. i., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 9 

ledge is necessarily composed of three factors. 
They are confused and confusing, and the 
result of their philosophy is never-ending 
verbal warfare. Great and good men many 
of them are, and often dimly perceive the 
truth ; but so far as my limited reading ex- 
tends, never hold the truth clear and fast ; 
that a word is a necessary, and not a mere 
casual or accidental factor in knowledge. 

The first of these three classes of objectors, 
the materialist, ends in atheism ; the second, 
the idealist, ends in pantheism; and the third 
class ends in confusion and logomachy. We 
shall consider them all in the next chapter. 

(3.) The construction of Numbers. — But to 
proceed with the construction of truth on this 
subject : I say, that the first and funda- 
mental law of all science, or accurate know- 
ledge, is what cavillers and sceptics will most 
readily admit, for they generally boast of the 
rule as if it was their exclusive possession, 
viz., not to admit more than is necessary, i. e., 
not to admit that things are different until 
their difference is demonstrated and clearly 
shown. The second rule is, to admit our 



20 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. i., § 3. 

fellow men, with whom we reason, to make 
and use such words and signs, distinct and 
separate, as will best explain their meanings. 
Our first step, therefore, with the three 
things proved to exist by means of our first 
postulate, must be to assume signs exactly 
alike for all three. We do not know, or are 
not agreed upon, the difference between 
minds, things, and words, or between a mind, 
a thing, and a word. We assume ourselves 
ignorant to satisfy all sceptics, or to satisfy 
our own minds, that we are reasoning accu- 
rately; and we set down the three things 
thus, and give them like names or signs ;— 

1 — mind — one 

1 + 1 =* mind + thing — two 

1 + 1 + 1 =* mind 4- thing + word *=* three 

Thus using the ordinary signs of unity, 
equality, and addition, as being clearer and 
shorter than the words they express* But in 
this proceeding we are only selecting new and 
clearer signs and symbols, or words for the 
three things already deduced from our first 
postulate. If the reader pleases so to call it, 



C. i., §3,] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 21 

we are merely spinning new words and new 
signs. Having deduced the existence of three 
distinct things, of which, or of whose nature, 
except their separate distinctness, we know 
nothing, we have called them by the same 
name, viz., units, and assumed signs exactly 
alike for them all, and have given the name 
of one to the first ; of two to the first and 
second ; and of three to the whole. But 
having commenced in this way by one, two, 
three, spinning or adding like words or signs 
called units, we can go on with the same 
process for ever, giving a new name on the 
addition of every new unit, and to distinguish 
all these words thus, meaning sums of like 
signs or units, we call them 

Numbers. 

If the reader has ever mystified his mind, 
or puzzled his brain about abstraction, or 
universal and general terms, we trust that we 
are gradually dispelling all mystery by thus 
demonstrating, to eye and ear, that abstrac- 
tion is not, as most philosophers suppose and 
allege, subsequent to knowledge, but that it 



22 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.i.,§4. 

is, in fact, previous to knowledge. The true 
cause of abstraction is ignorance. Instead of 
the mind first perceiving and knowing a like- 
ness, and then giving a general name, or 
universal term, to the class of like things, the 
truth more properly may be said to be, that 
it is the absence of accurate knowledge in 
the mind that causes man to use general 
terms. Being ignorant of their differences, 
or not clearly perceiving their differences, 
we call the things by the same name, and it 
is right and proper so to do. For it is the 
first step in science to admit our ignorance, 
and to assume things to be alike until their 
differences are demonstrated. And those 
things whose differences we cannot demon- 
strate, we call by the same name. 

(4.) Unity ', Equality, Addition, Cavilling. 
— Perhaps some caviller may still be found 
to say, What right have you to assume that 
you can add one to one to make two, or one 
to two to make three ? what is this unity, 
addition, and equality which you thus assume 
quietly without their being granted ? But 
the plain answer to this, if the reader has the 



C.i.,§ 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 23 

patience to read it, is, that I am not assuming 
anything but the right to speak and write 
with accuracy or scientific precision. I am 
only doing what the caviller is himself doing, 
adding word to word, and sign to sign, to 
express my meaning. I make my units equal, 
and as I build up my equal signs and words, 
to prevent mistake hereafter, I give a new 
name to each bundle of words at every stage. 
I begin with a word, a sign, a unit, and go on 
making and adding like equal units, giving a 
new name on the addition of each unit ; and 
as to the likeness, it is not anything abstract, 
but the very simple and concrete effort made 
by the mouth, pen, or printers' ink, of poor 
ignorant human nature not yet capable of 
" advanced thinking," and not yet possessed 
of the advanced logic and philosophy at pre- 
sent rampant in Westminster. !NTo man can 
deny us the right to make signs as like as pos- 
sible, or to give a new name to each bundle. 

Having, however, possessed ourselves, 
thanks be to God, of a firm belief in One Unit 
in the beginning, we have thence strictly de- 
duced by means of our reason three units as 



24 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.i.,§5. 

its necessary component factors, not parts, 
but complicators or factors. Of each 01 
which, and its nature in our present stage of 
humility, we confess ourselves wholly igno- 
rant. But having made and got three from two 
by adding one, we get four from three in the 
same way, and so construct our numbers, on 
the binary quinary decimal, duodecimal, or 
any other system, until our paper or patience 
is ended, and the whole of symbolic arithmetic 
stands developed before us. For this, we beg 
to refer the philosophic reader to any intelli- 
gent writer on arithmetic. We thus have got 
a volume full of like words or like signs, 
numbers, in which the likeness is not abstract 
but concrete, being as great a likeness as 
paper and printers' ink can produce in two 
units ; whose actual differences, if any, we 
abstract and disregard, not by knowledge and 
philosophy, but by ignorance, i.e., only be- 
cause we cannot see, perceive, or demonstrate 
their differences. 

(5.) Mr. Mill, and Numbers in the Abstract. 
— Plain, disgustingly plain and trite, as all 
this must appear to any brain not addled by 



C.i.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 25 

modern concrete materialistic philosophy, 
nevertheless a great logician, one to whom all 
the other advanced thinkers at Westminster 
bow the head with reverence (and we also, let 
us say, reverence honest intellect, however 
much in error), denies altogether what seems 
to us so very clear and manifest- He admits 
the existence of knowledge, he admits the 
existence of minds, things, and words ; but he 
denies the existence of numbers in the ab- 
stract. Under an apparent candour, and too 
«:reat readiness to admit what a logician 
should prove, he seems to us to conceal a 
lurking confusion of thought which tends to 

ft ft 

confound all knowledge, and to render truth 
itself dubious. He has not made up his own 
mind, and therefore, as we intend to show, 
contradicts himself on the question, whether 
a true " conception present in our intellect," 
is or is not a thing, an existing thing, an exist- 
ence. He says, evidently in doubt, " There 
seems a kind of contradiction in using such 
an expression as that one thing is merely an 
attribute of another thing." 1 This seeming 
1 Mill's "Logic/' i., p. 51, 4th Edition. 

C 



26 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.i.,§5. 

contradiction, to Mr. Mill's mind, is turned 
into actual contradiction when he comes to 
consider numbers, lines, surfaces, &c. As to 
numbers, he says, " All numbers must be num- 
bers of something ; there can be no such thing 
as numbers in the abstract. Ten must mean 
ten bodies, or ten sounds, or ten beatings of the 
pulse." l We are not told why ten should not 
mean what everybody knows it means, ten units; 
and beyond this mere assertion, and the analogy 
of arithmetic to geometry, which I will after- 
wards consider, no proof is given of this 
doctrine, and the author's whole work is a dis- 
proof of it, for it is full of similar abstractions 
justly called things. Can there be an abstract 
body, or an abstract man, or an abstract lord 
mayor? is Mr. Mill Martinus Scribblerus, or 
himself? w Laws," " causes," " attributes," 
'■ qualities," " relations," " successions," " se- 
quences," and many other abstractions, are 
freely dealt with and insisted on as " things 
themselves" in Mr, Mill's own work; but 
numbers and geometrical abstractions, mathe- 
matical lines, figures, surfaces, are dismissed 
to the region of nonentities. Mr. Mill's phi- 

1 v Logic," vol. i., p. ?83,. 



C.i.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 27 

losophy tends to prove that law and cause are 
identical. Suppose we dealt with him as he 
deals with mathematicians, and said, What 
are laws? "All laws must be laws about 
something : there can be no such thing as 
laws in the abstract." What is a law in the 
abstract? Nothing. What then is a law 
in the concrete ? Oh ! it is a rule laid down 
by a superior, or any other definition you 
please. Well, and a number in the concrete, 
if you please to call it so, is a bundle of 
units, marks, or words, or signs calculated 
by an arithmetician. Why one should be an 
existence, and the other not, in Mr. Mill's 
philosophy and logic, passes all understanding, 
and certainly Mr. Mill has not explained. 
He says that geometrical abstractions as 
defined by geometers are " wholly incon- 
ceivable," l and are therefore nothings. On 
other occasions he is severe on philosophers 
in general, and on Isaac Newton and Dr. 
Whewell in particular, for presuming to argue 
from inconceivability, but in order to abolish 
mathematical abstractions, it seems to be a 

1 " Logic," vol. i., p. 254. 

c2 



28 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.i.,§6. 

mode of logic not altogether objectionable 
to Mr, Mill. 

(6.) Abstraction, Induction, Causation, 
Numbers, fyc. — But let us hear what he says 
about Abstraction. Abstraction " is the 
foundation of all the control we can exercise 
over the operations of our own minds ; the 
power, when a perception is present to our 
senses, or a conception to our intellects, of 
attending to a part only of that perception 
or conception, instead of the whole." ] But 
what is the result of this power ? what is the 
effect of this operation ? Has it no result or 
no effect ? Can a power operate and end in 
producing nothing? Why may not I, if I 
have a perception or conception of a mind, 
a thing, and a word, operate by this mental 
power and abstract all their known or un- 
known differences, and attend only to their 
individual distinctness or unity, and call them 
three units, or three? The word three is a 
very good and clear abstract term; it is a 
number in the abstract, a general name, a 
universal word, meaning all the units in three; 
1 « Logic," vol. i., p. 283. 



C. l, § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 29 

just as man, or mankind, means all the 
units of mankind, by abstracting all their in- 
dividual differences. To be sure, Mr. Mill 
tells us that proper names, or general terms, 
have, " strictly speaking, no signification." 1 
When, for example, however, Mr. Mill says, 
"men read the sacred books of their religion," 2 
&c, does he mean nothing by the abstract 
term u men" ? has his word, in strictness, no 
signification ? He does not tell us the differ- 
ence between strict speaking and other speak- 
ing, or how to know when he is speaking 
strictly, and when not. Of course we cannot 
divine when Mr. Mill's words — his general 
terms — have some signification, and when, 
" strictly speaking," not. All his words are 
general terms ; he does not speak with singu- 
lars, but with universals, like the rest of the 
world. We cannot make a sentence out of 
singulars, for we must alw T ays, at least, have 
the copula, in the sense of existence or 
equality, as in, John is not Harry ; or, this is 
Tom. But when writing a logical work we 
think the author should always, as far as 
"Logic" vol. i., p. 36. 2 lb., vol. ii., p. 339. 



30 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. i., § 6. 

possible, speak strictly. But in logic we 
cannot permit a writer to shift his ground 
between strict speaking and other speaking, 
especially one who says his words shall always 
be the names of " things themselves'' l 

In short, Mr. Mill's denial of the truth and 
existence of mathematical abstractions, is a 
mere logical shuffle about abstract words, 
which Mr. Mill makes to mean " things them- 
selves " when he chooses, and when he prefers 
another way of looking at them, he makes 
them to have " strictly speaking, no signifi- 
cation " ! But Mr. Mill's bad logic on this 
subject may be shown, in due form, by an- 
other consideration, viz., that he himself de- 
rives the certainty of numbers from the cer- 
tainty of " induction per enumerationem sim- 
plicem" " The principles of numbers," he 
says, " are duly and satisfactorily proved by 
that method alone, nor are they susceptible 
of any other proof." 2 But what is enumera- 
tion, but numbers? The simplest kind of in- 
duction requires, therefore, numbers, i.e., 
enumeration ; so the proof of numbers is by 

1 "Logic," vol. i., p. 24. 2 lb., vol. ii., p. 99. 



C.i.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 31 

induction, which previously supposes enume- 
ration ! or numbers ! Our certainty in num- 
bers is our certainty by enumeration ! 

A philosopher must certainly have arrived 
at his wit's end when he is reduced to such 
logic as this, and when, also, to support his 
system he is reduced to make the truth and 
certainty of the propositions, 1 = 1, or 
1 + 1=2, depend upon what he is obliged 
to call " the loose and uncertain mode of in- 
duction per enumerationem simplicem" and 
upon what he calls " the uniformity in the suc- 
cession of events, otherwise called the law of 
Causation " ! Mr. Mill assumes these two prin- 
ciples, viz., induction and causation, as funda- 
mental truths, self evident, and hangs thereon 
the truths that 1 = 1 and 1 + 1=2! just 
as if enumeration and succession did not 
already imply numbers, as true conceptions 
existing in the mind previous to any induction 
whatever, and previous to any thought of law 
or succession whatever. Are we to call this 
glaring petitio principii logic? Can absurdity 
reach a more sublime height than to make a 
chain stronger than its w r eakest link, or to 



32 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C l, § 7. 

make " the scientific ultimately rest upon the 
unscientific"? 1 The force of logical folly can 
no further go, and so the author stands pre- 
eminent, the facile princeps of all " advanced 
thinkers" in England. Is the advance for- 
wards or backwards ? 

It is, therefore, we say, simply absurd and 
self-contradictory to make numbers, or the 
truth of numbers, depend on induction and 
causation, because induction previously im- 
plies and supposes numbers, i.e., enumeration; 
and causation also previously implies num- 
bers, or succession, at least two. Induction 
and causation may be partially founded on 
numbers, but not numbers on induction or 
causation ; numbers must be first, induction 
and causation may follow after. 

(7.) Geometrical Abstractions, Lines, Sur- 
faces. — But the reader has had probably more 
than enough about numbers. What shall we 
say about points, lines, and surfaces, " as de- 
fined by geometers," " wholly inconceivable " 
to Mr. Mill? Here he revels in all the glories 

1 "Logic," vol. ii., p. 102. 



C.i., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 33 

of concrete or materialistic thinking, as now 
prevalent at Westminster. 

We, of course, say that the abstract con- 
ceptions of geometers are true facts, thing* 
actually existing in nature, so far as the 
human mind can judge of external things. 
Here, as before, Mr. Mill begins at the wrong 
end of the stick and sticks there. He savs, 
" our idea of a point is simply our idea of a 
minimum visibile." But geometers, when 
challenged about their abstractions, as they 
have been by self-puzzled logicians for 2,000 
years, begin at the other end, viz., the impene- 
trability of matter. Mr. Mill himself admits 
this as a concrete fact, very sensible as far as 
our senses carry us ; we cannot possibly get 
beyond the surface of external matter. A 
geometer who knows his business begins with 
a surface. 1 What is a surface ? has it any 
thickness, or none ? Man arrives at a surface 
and can feel it and see it, but he never yet 
felt the thickness of a surface ; even in liquids 
and gases — those things that have an unplea- 

1 Vide note to " Ellington s Euclid," which is, or was, 
the text book in Dublin, and the references there. 

C 5 



3 4 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. i., § 7. 

sant resemblance to what ^advanced thinkers 
call pure mind or spirit, and which penetrate 
organised bodies with great facility and free- 
dom, and which seem to penetrate us, though 
we cannot penetrate their surfaces. 

We say, therefore, that man is for ever 
stopped at the surface of matter by his senses. 
Though one sense, the sense of sight, can see 
through the surface of transparent and lus- 
trous bodies, yet man cannot see the thickness 
of the surface. Light can get beyond the sur- 
face, but man cannot. Here, then, is a matter 
of fact, a phenomenon of concrete sense, a 
concrete fix sufficient to hold Mr. Mill and 
his followers for ever. If they ever touched 
any surface but surface without thickness, we 
wish they would show geometers how to do 
it, for no man that we know of ever did so 
before. Mr. Mill must, therefore, either be- 
lieve his senses, as geometers do, and have done 
from the days of Pythagoras downwards, at 
least, and must say that surface has no thick- 
ness ; or, in short, he must disbelieve his in- 
conceivability ! Having once got a surface 
without thickness, we have for its boundary, 



C.i.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 35 

of course, a line necessarily being length 
without breadth ; and a point* the boundary 
of a line, necessarily without parts or dimen* 
sions of any kind. Either, therefore, Mr. 
Mill must hold to his doctrine and disbelieve 
his senses, or condescend to conceive points, 
lines, and surfaces, as all w 7 ell instructed 
geometers have done for two thousand years 
and more. Rather humiliating, no doubt, to 
think with Plato and Newton ; almost as bad 
as believing, like Newton, in what Mr. Her- 
bert Spencer calls "the Hebrew 7 myth"! Mr. 
Mill, indeed, who seems thoroughly honest, 
although I take leave to say thoroughly 
word-puzzled and self-contradictory on this 
subject, seems himself to have felt a little of 
the absurdity of his philosophy when he was 
asked whether his concrete thick surface had 
an inside as well as an outside ! But like all 
worshippers of idols, having manufactured his 
idol — viz., certainty or truth by induction-^ 
he prefers to swallow the absurdity rather 
than to give up his creed. Mr. Mill, indeed, 
has said that a condition is implied in all pro- 
positions concerning numbers, viz., that 1=1 , 



36 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.i.,§8. 

which of course is true, but I have demon- 
strated that this condition is not imposed as 
a condition of knowledge or truth, but is the 
condition of ignorance, ci priori ; the condi- 
tion is performed in the act of perception, we 
make the equality. .When ignorant of the 
nature of things, the mind, perceiving things 
to be two and not one, is bound to treat them 
as altogether alike and altogether equal ; for 
it knows no difference until their difference 
and inequality are demonstrated, and this by 
the first and fundamental law both of science 
and of scepticism, viz., to assume as little as 
possible, and nothing that is not provable 
from the first assumption. 

(8.) Numbers the foundation of all accurate 
knowledge. — Thus, however, we have demon- 
strated that numbers are necessarily, i. e. 9 
never-ceasingly r , given to man from and in his 
first cognition, and so are the beginning and 
foundation of all scientific truth, i. e., all 
accurate knowledge of the world within and 
of the world without. 

The reader will therefore perceive that we 
have turned the weapons of scepticism against 



C. I., § 8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 37 

itself. Instead of setting about with learned 
words and phrases, and the process called 
abstraction, to establish a Uke7iess called 
unity, we have been led to begin at the true 
beginning, the existence of one thing, Know- 
ledge ; thence we have deduced the necessary 
existence of three things ; factors in that 
one thing, and not parts of it; and by the 
rule of scepticism and of science, not to admit 
or assume things to be different until they 
are clearly shown to be so, we obtained three 
equal units, the factors of the first unit, and 
thence have deduced all the truths of symbolic 
arithmetic in the ordinary manner. 

We now, therefore, proceed to consider 
very shortly the three classes of objectors or 
dissentients to this view of human knowledge, 
viz., those who think human knowledge is 
compounded of two factors, or parts, viz., 
subject + object, or the antithesis philoso- 
phers ; and secondly, those who think it com- 
pounded of one thing alone, either matter or 
mind ; viz., the materialist and the dogma- 
tical idealist respectively. 

With respect to the object + subject phi- 



3 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, £C. i* § 8. 

losophers generally, we do not consider that 
they in substance dispute our first deduction 
of three factors in knowledge, for they all of 
course practically admit that words have 
something to do in the composition of know- 
ledge* It is only their Verbal looseness and 
uncertainty that we have to remark upon, that 
verbal uncertainty which it is our object to 
try and permanently remove. Science, phi- 
losophy, or knowledge, without words or sym- 
bols, would be the play of Hamlet with the 
part of Hamlet left out ; * but what part 
words play or take in philosophy, is, without 
question, the great fundamental difficulty 
which all who think have to encounter in the 
science of truth or in the pursuits of phi- 
losophy. • 

1 Vide Professor Ferrier's ably reasoned " Institutes of 
Metaphysic," summing up the object -+■ subject theory of 
knowledge, or epistemology, leaving out words altogether 
as factors in knowledge, but in other respects containing a 
very able summary of the antithesis philosophy. Kant also 
wholly neglects words in his great work. It may be ob- 
served, that I deny the distinction between denotatives and 
connotatives, or attributives, as maintained by Mill and 
Whately as wholly illogical. Not even a proper name 
singular is a mere mark like #, an unknown quantity in 
Algebra. It is never spoken without some idea or thought 
in the mind connected to the name. Such words as Socratic 
or Platonic prove this. 



C. ii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 39 



CHAPTER It. 

THE THREE CLASSES OF OBJECTORS.— THE 
INTELLECTUAL UNITY IN TRINITY. 

(I.) The Antithesis or Subject + object 
Scheme of Philosophy.— It is very worthy of 
observation, by all who feel an interest in the 
human mind, or in arriving at truth and cer- 
tainty, that if, in the course of the reasoning 
which I have developed in the last chapter, 
we had commenced with assuming at first two 
existences or distinct things only ; or if we 
could hold the opinion that human know- 
ledge necessarily implies only two things — 
say subject and object, or ego and non ego — 
we should have at once fallen into a dubiety 
or uncertainty in the deduction of Numbers, 



40 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. n., § 1. 

quite independent of materialism or dog- 
matic idealism. For if we only had had 
one, two, as the foundation of numbers, 
instead of one, two, three, in our first con- 
ception, we could not feel quite sure what 
the next most simple or most natural step 
should be, for there would be two steps 
equally natural. Two is formed by adding 
one to one ; and the next like step might, 
therefore, have been two to two, and so on, 
making each new number by adding the former 
number to itself. We should, therefore, have 
remained uncertain or dubious, between what 
are called the natural numbers, 1 , 2, 3, 4, &c, 
and the series, 1, 2, 4, 8, &c. Both of these 
might have been said to be equally natural. 
But having assumed only one unit in the be- 
ginning, if three units are given in our first 
cognition, or conception of knowledge, the 
mind cannot jump from three to three times 
three ; and is, as it were, compelled to recog- 
nise the individual unity of the three factors, 
and to discuss their combinations and to 
proceed by the steps of one, two, three, to 
the natural series of numbers, adding unit 



C. ii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 4 1 

after unit, in place of adding units or things 
to themselves. 

The same dubiety and uncertainty which I 
have illustrated by the two series, 1, 2, 3, &c, 
and 1, 2, 4, &c, seems to me to result from 
all attempts to reduce human knowledge or 
philosophy to an antithesis — in short, to a 
couple ; thoughts and things, ego and non ego, 
subject and object, facts and theories, and so 
forth ; from which antithesis, as I conceive, no 
kind of certainty can result. I say, therefore, 
with great respect for many of these great phi- 
losophers and learned men, that the foundation 
is insecure and uncertain, and involves all 
philosophical questions in its own dubiety. 
It compels them to endeavour to sustain their 
system by new assumptions, forms of thought, 
intuitions, necessary conceptions — such as 
Space, and Time, and Cause, &c. — which 
enable any bold sceptic to blow the whole 
fabric to pieces, by refusing to admit all or 
some of these assumptions : and, for example, 
to declare Space to be nothing, and Infinite 
Space a mere superstition ! a bad habit of 
thought, as Mr. Mill seems to call it ! 



42 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C a, § 2. 

2. VFbrcfo, wo£ ideas i factors in knowledge. 
-—We are seeking for truth and certainty, 
and I admit that it is a fundamental question 
whether our first cognition — the first " con- 
ception present to the intellect " — by what- 
ever name we call it, is necessarily composed 
of one, two, or three things, or existences. 
I say three— subject, object, and what I might 
have called connect or traject, or idea, but that 
I prefer the plain English of mind, thing, 
and word. I call the third factor a word 
rather than an idea, &c, because we do 
always give it a name when we try to speak 
accurately to our neighbour. That word 
always expresses what Kant says u begins by 
being sensuous and ends by being intellectual. " 
I call it a word also, because it at once relieves 
us from all that intolerable logomachy and 
jargon which has gone on from the time of 
Plato, about ideas, impressions, sensations, per- 
ceptions, conceptions, reflexions, representa- 
tions, intuitions, &c. ; every age, in vain, trying 
to fix what never can be fixed — viz., the identity 
of A's sensation and reflexion with B's sensa- 
tion and reflexion, the sameness of A's idea 



C.n.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 43 

with B's idea. They are different, and will 
remain different to the end of time ; and it is 
utterly idle to ignore the truth, which I shall 
more fully consider in the next chapter, that 
man's agreement in knowledge can only be an 
agreement in Words. Without going further 
into this question at present, I merely say that 
'a word is one necessary factor in human know- 
ledge ; for even if I admit that A may have 
knowledge without a word, A and B, and all 
the rest of mankind, cannot have the same 
knowledge without a word to express, and 
teach, and learn it by. It is, therefore, a 
factor in knowledge, even if not a factor in 
A's knowledge ; though I should be inclined 
to deny that any man in the body can have 
any true idea or true knowledge without some 
word, sign, or other symbol to express it, 
though he alone understands it, and possibly 
cannot make any intelligible sign or word to 
convey it to his brother man. 1 We shall have, 

1 St. Paul's vision will occur to the reader — II. Cor., xii., 2. 
— when he heard " unspeakable words not lawful for a 
man to utter," but whether in the body or out of the body 
he could not tell. Even here words were part of the 
vision. Of course every intelligible sign is a word. So we 



44 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.n,§3. 

however, to consider words and ideas much 
more fully hereafter. 

(3.) Fundamental Antithesis founded in 
Mistaken Intuitions. — We say, therefore, that 
this fundamental antithesis, " philosophy," 
this " object and subject " scheme of human 
knowledge, is founded on a mistake, an 
omission, or neglect of the very important* 
part played by words amongst mankind as 
necessary factors of knowledge. Kant, though 
also confused with his " Unity of the syn- 
thesis of the Manifold," which is a learned 
and roundabout name for the process of 
making general terms, was, in mf opinion, 
nearer right than those of his followers who 
try to reduce philosophy distinctly to an 
antithesis of object + subject. Kant became 
confused, as I think, from not seeing distinctly 
that the first " manifold" requires to be three, 
and not more than three, in unity together. He 
became unable to deduce the ideas of space 
and time from anything, and, therefore, un- 

call both Scripture and Jesus the Word of God; both 
signs : the One more than a sign, the other a mere sign or 
symbol of the Divine Spirit that dictated the words. — 
I. Cor., ii., 13. 



C.n.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 45 

scientifically assumed both as forms of thought, 
as fundamental intuitions ; and his followers 
have improved upon this bad example, till 
they appear almost to assume anything they 
please to be a fundamental form of thought 
and intuition ; and men possessed of reason- 
ing faculties turn away in disgust or contempt, 
or blow their assumptions to the winds, by 
denying the whole with more or less plau- 
sibility. 

On the subject of number, Kant contra- 
dicted himself by, in one passage making 
time generate number, and in another makings 
number generate time. I give the passages 
below. 1 His system is overthrown as to space 



1 Kant says — Bonn's Translation, p. 110 — " Number 
is nothing else than the unity of the synthesis of the 
manifold in a homogeneous intuition by means of my 
generating time itself in my apprehension of the intui- 
tion." Here time is said to be generated by number. But 
at page 28, he had previously laid down this principle: 
" Time is not an empirical conception ; time is a necessary 
representation lying at the foundation of all our intui- 
tions ; time is given a priori" So time is at the founda- 
tion of number, and number at the foundation of time, and 
even generates it, or of two things both are first, which is a 
clear contradiction. So far as I know, the first above pas- 
sage as to number, is the only one in his celebrated work 
attempting to explain number. The fact is, that number 



46 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.u.,§4. 

and time being necessary forms of all our 
thoughts, by citing number as evidence to the 
contrary ; for in what time or in what space does 
the thought of the number three necessarily 
exist ? We intend to show hereafter that as 
numbers are given in our first cognition and 
by every sense, they are the measure or make- 
sure of all other things, and that as numbers are 
like words, made alike by man himself, so time 
is like minds in succession, i.e., like thoughts 
enumerated by numbers ; and spaces are like 
bodies negatively observed and the absence 
enumerated in time ; and that minds, bodies, 
and words include all possible predicables. 
But we are anticipating, and we shall have 
to consider this object + subject, or antithesis 
scheme of philosophy more fully, when we 
come to consider what words really are. 

(4.) Materialist and Idealist Objectors. — 
As no man who can rationallv discuss the 
nature of human knowledge can deny the 
existence of the words he uses or abuses ; or 

is the simplest and first scientific cognition, and is given by 
every sense, for we can count touches, sights, sounds, tastes, 
and smells, and it is, therefore, the fit measure of all other 
things, 



C.n.,§4,] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 47 

that they do in some necessary way go to 
form the human knowledge which he is en- 
deavouring with his words to establish or 
refute, we might have assumed ourselves to 
agree with the object + subject philosophers 
for the purpose of the last chapter, though 
we do not express ourselves exactly alike ; and 
might have then said that all objections to 
our system of conceiving knowledge as the 
product of three factors, mind, thing, and 
word, and thence deducing Numbers, were 
reducible to two: first, the objection of the 
dogmatical materialist who denies the distinc- 
tion between mind and matter, and reduces 
knowledge to some composition or operation 
of matter and words ; and, second, that of the 
dogmatical idealist who denies the same dis- 
tinction, and reduces knowledge to a compo* 
sition or operation of mind and words, 

I do in substance agree with all those unan- 
swerable reasonings bv which Kant and his 
followers have established what I think the true 
view of Hume and Berkeley's doctrine ; that 
which preserves the distinction of subject and 
object, and yet asserts that things in themselves 



48 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.n.,§4. 

can never be known ; i.e., can form no part 
of human knowledge. But the pure idealist, 
and the pure materialist, both strike one of 
our factors out of the conception of know- 
ledge, by dogmatically denying the separate 
existence or nature of either matter or mind 
respectively, and equally neglect the third 
factor, words. 

The Materialist Objection. — Both these 
objectors admit that something thinks. Now, 
when a materialist asserts that matter thinks, 
it seems to me the silliest thing in the 
world to say the contrary ; for as neither 
party really knows anything of matter in 
itself, it is as absurd for the one to dogmati- 
cally deny, as for the other to dogmatically 
assert, that matter can think. The only proper 
way to meet any one in error, is to come to 
some convention or agreement as to the words 
to be used for the purpose of the discussion. 
" There is no magic in the word" matter ; 
and the materialist, for the purpose of our 
discussion in the last chapter, should be 
answered by saying, " By all means, sir ! let 
us agree that in our discussion the thinking 



C.n.,§4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 49 

thing shall be called matter ; but what shall 
we call the wo^-thinking thing ?" If he is so 
foolish as to say openly, I want to call it 
matter too, the answer is clear, that he cannot 
be permitted to call a thing and its contrary 
by the same name in the same discussion. 
" A" and " not A," cannot in the same dis- 
course be called B, for of course any one 
could prove or disprove anything in that 
manner ; we could prove that A is sometimes 
itself and sometimes not itself. If he will 
leave the word matter out altogether, and 
consent to always use the words thinking 
thing, and non-thinking thing, that answers 
the purpose of the argument in the last 
chapter, and gives us three distinct things in 
our first cognition, viz., the thinking thing, 
the non-thinking thing, and the word. And the 
materialist must do this, or shift into the 
dogmatical idealist, and say everything 
thinks ; and that there is no different name 
to be necessarily given to the mind of man 
and to a stone ; that they are fundamentally 
and originally one and the same thinking 
thing. Thus, however, the materialist is com- 

D 



50 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. n., §5. 

pelled to admit our first deduction, that the 
existence of any knowledge presupposes and 
admits the existence of three distinct things, 
factors in knowledge — which for the present, 
and for the purposes of this discussion, I have 
called, like Englishmen in general, minds, 
things, and words, the three necessary compo- 
nent factors of all knowledge. 

( 5 . ) The Idealist Objection the same in Sub- 
stance as the Materialist. — The dogmatical 
idealist is, for the purpose of the discussion 
in the last chapter, also met in the same way. 

In fact and truth, the objection is one and 
the same, for both materialist and dogmatical 
idealist assert the identity of the thinking 
and non-thinking things, and so contradict 
themselves. But when the dogmatical idealist 
denies the existence of the ^o/z-thinking thing 
altogether, that contradicts the first admis- 
sion, the existence of knowledge, which does 
not itself think. And if he says knowledge 
is words, he is then justly compellable to give 
us distinct names to the words that are know- 
ledge, and to the words that are not knowledge, 
and we have mind, truth, and word ; or mind, 



C.n.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 51 

illusion, and word ; or mind, thought, and 
word : from which three words or things we 
can still construct our numbers, and our whole 
numerical system, according to the reasoning 
in the last chapter, and arrive at exactly the 
same conclusions, to which, therefore, every 
dogmatic idealist must agree and submit, or be 
guilty of self-contradiction. In fact and truth, 
materialism and pure or dogmatic idealism are 
not properly distinguishable from one another, 
and their professors generally aid themselves 
when in any difficulty by shifting their ground 
from one to the other, from Pantheism to 
Panatheism, and back again; but neither of 
them can, without self-contradiction, deny 
our reasoning in the last chapter, by which, 
from the existence of knowledge, we have 
deduced three distinct things in our first 
cognition, and thence have arrived at Num- 
bers, and at all the truths of symbolic arith- 
metic; not by abstraction or induction, but 
from and out of our admitted ignorance, by 
deduction from our first postulate or axiom, 
which is self-evident. 

Wherefore we have laid a firm beginning 

D 2 



52 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.h.,§6. 

and foundation for all our scientific and accu- 
rate knowledge in numbers of units, or signs 
made by man as exactly alike as possible, and 
duly and systematically registered in bundles 
by giving separate names or words to each 
bundle. 

(6.) The Stand-point arrived at, Numbers. 
— We are not now discussing materialism or 
dogmatic idealism, or their rationality ; but the 
materialist and idealist cannot deny our rea- 
soning in the last chapter without contradict- 
ing themselves. We have thus reached a very 
remarkable stand point ; having demonstrated, 
as we trust, beyond cavil, by any sect of 
philosophers, or any rational being whatever, 
that if we suppose and admit, as every man 
must do who reasons, the existence of some 
knowledge, w r e can thence deduce ci priori 
all the truths of numbers, and all the truths 
of symbolic arithmetic, or, in short, all the 
accurate knowledge, i. e., the whole science of 
equal units, being numbers of like words, or 
like symbols. 

We have arrived at our equal units, not by 
abstraction of knowledge, or by perception of 



C. ii., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 53 

likeness; but in the way all human know- 
ledge and all human truth has been synthe- 
tically built up, viz., by making and assuming 
like symbols, like words, like marks, for 
things distinct, but of whose likeness in them- 
selves, or sameness, or difference in them- 
selves, we are, or assumed ourselves, for the 
sake of argument, to be, wholly ignorant. 
These like marks we make, and we call them 
units ; we tie them in bundles with a name to 
each — a general word to know it again : each 
word, each number, meaning all the units, 
tied up in the bundle. The truth and cer- 
tainty of the process depends not on induc- 
tion, but on deduction. We deduce twenty 
and give it a name, because we have already 
arrived at nineteen. Every step is deduced 
from the last. But having arrived by deduc- 
tion at this stand point even at a volume of 
symbolic truths, of the truths of arithmetic, 
truths acknowledged by all intelligent men as 
actual truths, the time has come when it may 
be asked, is there anything real in what we 
have been doing? We have a volume of 
words, of signs, of symbols, and their rela- 



54 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ii., §7. 

tions, but have they any signification, any 
meaning, any application to anything but 
themselves, the mutual utterances, the mutual 
and conventional signs which men make to one 
another ? 

Realism, idealism, nominalism, the tattered 
banners of philosophic systems, are thus 
forced on our attention. But before we ven- 
ture upon such a stormy sea of human words, 
let us try to draw some one certain practical 
conclusion from our first conception of know- 
ledge; a conclusion which, in our opinion, 
concerns every human being, be he peasant 
or be he philosopher, who is seeking for 
truth. The truth is great, and shall prevail. 

(7.) Trinity in Unity, tJie first Manifold. 
— We started with the assumption of one un- 
known existence called knowledge, the nature 
and truth of which we all were to try and 
discover by means of our intellect and reason. 
We have shown that the nature and constitu- 
tion of man's mind is such, that the very first 
rational step forces, as it were, & priori, by 
deduction into the human mind, that this un- 
known existence which we are in search of 



C. ii., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 55 

cannot be thought of or conceived without 
self-contradiction, except as a compound of 
three factors ; not parts, but factors of the 
knowledge we are searching for. These three 
distinct thoughts, or things, or words, what- 
ever we please to call them, are not added 
together in our first conception of knowledge, 
but are independent factor s^ complicating, 
composing, or compounding the one thought 
or thing, knowledge, in the mind. It was not 
the mere addition of mind, thing, and word, as 
three things, that compounded knowledge in 
our first conception. Our addition or enume- 
ration has been a wholly subsequent opera- 
tion to our first conception of the three. It 
was some necessary active inter-connection, 
some mutual combination, or action and re- 
action together of three distinct things, units, 
as we called them, that compounded our first 
unit or cognition, i. e., our conception of 
Knowledge. So long as we are, and remain, 
ignorant of the true nature of these three 
distinct things which we called a mind, a 
thing, and a word, we could only properly 
take and assume the same symbol for each one. 



5 6 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. n., § 7. 

We called that symbol, unity, and being 
wholly ignorant of the nature of the original >. 
existence, as well as of the three component 
factors thereof, except only that the mind of 
man forces him to recognise them as three 
and as distinct, the very first form of human 
knowledge is necessarily the logical and ma- 
thematical truth, 

Unity into Unity into Unity=Unity. 

This is the first possible true conception 
which the human mind can make of KNOW- 
LEDGE ; as a unity of three distinct unities. 
In Kantian phraseology, it is " the unity of 
the synthesis of a threefold ;" and the first 
manifold that the mind can conceive, or build 
up together, is the threefold in the first cog- 
nition. This foi*?n of thought is not assumed, 
but proved. No one who speaks can deny it 
to us without self-contradiction in words, and 
that we have proved in the preceding discus- 
sion. This is the first form, therefore, which 
any knowledge assumes in the human mind, 
beginning at the true and only beginning, of 
supposing man wholly ignorant, and on the 
assumption that some knowledge exists for 



C.n.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 57 

the human mind to discover and contemplate, 
in order to satisfy the restless craving of the 
human intellect. 

The intellectual law or constitution of the 
human mind, therefore, requires, of necessity 
— i.e., never-ceasingly — as the very origin 
and fundamental principle, at once appreciable 
by the ignorant and by the wise, the ad- 
mission of this truth, a logical Unity in Trinity, 
a Trinity in Unity, as its first step to truth. 
It is not that no other is conceivable, but 
that any other conception is self-contradictory 
in words. The dogmatical materialist and 
dogmatical idealist both profess to conceive a 
form of knowledge compounded of two, and 
not three, factors; but we have shown that 
they must contradict themselves in stating 
their conception. This is that logical, tjiat 
verbal, Trinity which has been dimly seen 
by many great philosophers from Plato down- 
wards. The admission of this truth is thus 
demonstrated intellectually ; as the first step, 
the very first condition, the first necessary 
deduction implied in the admission of any 
knowledge whatever. Let self-puzzled or 

D 5 



5 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. il, § 7. 

word -puzzled philosophers dwell on the fact 
that no knowledge can exist in the human 
mind without the admission of this funda- 
mental truth, and that every intellect which 
denies it is self-contradictory. Men can al- 
ways find an excuse for not believing what 
they do not love or like, but honest intellect 
will admit it as the first and last, the be- 
ginning and end, of human knowledge. 

The pure intellectual conception and the 
pure moral conception of a Trinity in Unity 
are wholly different and incommensurable. I 
trust that I have been able to engrave this 
great intellectual truth more clearly and dis- 
tinctly than hitherto on the human intellect 
of Englishmen ; but it requires an Infinite 
Spirit to inscribe the true moral conception 
upon the fleshly tables of the human heart ; 
that moral truth, that to the human mind 
the first Existence is, of necessity, a Trinity ; 
the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifies 
the three coequal and coeternal units in the 
first unity; the Mind, the Spirit, and the 
Word of God — the true and only symbol of 
Divine love. It is, therefore, clear, and not 



C. ii., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 59 

to be gainsayed, that if, as Theists, we admit 
the existence of one God — a God of self- 
knowledge — that being is a Unity in Trinity, 
a Trinity in Unity, according to the necessary 
constitution of man's mind, and any other 
human conception of a God of self-knowledge 
is self-contradictory. 

When, therefore, a Jewish peasant, coming 
forward as a long-foretold and long-promised 
Messiah, publicly announced the doctrine " I 
and my Father are o?ie" " He who hath seen 
me hath seen the Father," and " the Father 
shall give you another Comforter, even the 
Spirit of Truth ; He dwelleth with you, and 
shall be in you ; and ye shall know that I 
am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in 
you ; " he revealed a truth which, incompre- 
hensible as it may be to man's mind, and 
altogether above reason and not deducible 
thereby, is yet not only consistent with the 
highest reason, but any other human con- 
ception of the Deity ends in self-contradiction, 
and is inconsistent with the constitution of 
the human mind itself. 

God is an Object of worship, a Creator and 



60 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, ' [C. il, §7. 

Father ; he is a Subject, or mind and spirit, 
combining with supporting or dwelling in all 
good minds ; and he is the Divine Word or 
symbol, the highest human exemplar, pos- 
sessing the Divine " Spirit without measure ;" 
or, as the Church of Alexandria expressed it, 
" inferior to the Father as touching his man- 
hood, and equal to the Father as touching his 
Godhead." The distinct personality of the Son 
and Holy Spirit is a marvellous revelation, 
but consistent with the highest reason. The 
Trinity is not three relations to mankind, but 
three persons in one Deity, three Relations to 
Himself. And if any man argues that such a 
conception of the Deity is a conception of 
three Gods, we answer that he is as logically 
absurd and inconsistent as if he argued that 
human self-knowledge is a conception of three 
men, and not, as we have shown it to be, a 
conception of one man existing in three 
necessary relations to himself — as an object, 
a subject, and the word or thought — the 
connection between them, without which a 
man, as a being of self-knowledge, cannot 
logically exist or be rationally conceived by 



C. ii., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. fil 

the human mind. Thus are the deepest 
truths of revelation, which a child can apply 
to his own self-improvement, consistent with 
the highest reason on which a man can ex- 
ercise his intellect. Man has free choice and 
can refuse to believe, and may feel the pride 
of a fool in choosing wrong ; but he cannot 
find any intellectual shelter or logical refuge 
which will bear the test of rational exami- 
nation in denying this great revealed truth. 
Humility, however, goeth before true wisdom. 
(8.) Epistemology and Ontology inseparable. 
— One clear result, also, from this discussion 
of the composition of existence or knowledge 
is this, that the human mind cannot separate 
and distinguish epistemology from ontology, 
or the science of knowing from the science of 
being. Our fundamental postulate, which all 
men must grant in the form we have laid it 
down, is, in fact and truth, equivalent to the 
postulate, " God exists" or The Great " I 
am" exists. This is as certain as our own 
existence. Every man, verbally, admits it, 
and contradicts himself when he denies it. 
In short, intellectual existence and knowledge, 



62 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.n.,§8. 

in their most abstract sense, are one and the 
same thing. 1 Self-knowledge must involve self] 
and if all knowledge has three factors, the three 
factors of self-knowledge must be persona; of 
self, otherwise self would be not self. Episte- 
mology and ontology, therefore, not only can- 
not be separated, but neither can be discussed 
alone intellectually or considered by itself 

. 1 Sir Wm. Hamilton blows an uncertain sound on this 
subject — the composition of knowledge. Compare these 
two passages : " Knowledge is a relation, and supposes two 
terms. There is the knowing mind — the thing known; 
and the knowledge is the relation between these two." 
— Lect. by Man., i., p. 195. But he has previously said, 
at p. 146, "What we know is not a simple relation 
apprehended between the object known and the subject 
knowing, but every knowledge is a sum made up of several 
elements." These two statements clash. They are recon- 
ciled by alleging and proving, as I have done, that know- 
ledge is a product of three factors — mind, thing, and word. 
All knowledge implies, of necessity, these three, and no 
more than these three, factors. In short, a word is a 
necessary element in all knowledge. Knowledge is a 
Trinity in unity, intellectually combined. Professor Ferrier, 
in his "Institutes of Metaphysics," expressly leaves out 
words altogether, and says — " Object + subject is the 
absolute in cognition." — Prop. xxi. The wise and the 
ignorant receive the same stroke on the nerve. The former 
adopts a word to express it, and has knowledge which he can 
communicate ; the latter has no word, and knowledge does 
not exist. Ergo, I affirm that object + subject is not the 
absolute in cognition. The word gives life to the cognition, 
and without the word it is dead. A word is the embodiment 
of the thought connecting object and subject. 



C. ii., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 63 

alone. But the truth has hitherto been too 
much overlooked or neglected, that the third 
factor is necessary to self-knowledge. Self as 
an object, self as a subject, must have also self 
as a word or symbol of the knowledge ; the 
mind, the spirit, and the symbol or word, which 
to a man expresses the connection between the 
subjective mind and the objective or spiritual 
self which it perceives. A man cannot be 
conscious of a thought, a feeling, or a prin- 
ciple, without he has some word, symbol, or 
sign to express it. The self-consciousness is 
in some way, we know not how, mixed up 
with the word which expresses the self-con- 
sciousness. This is the fundamental fact in 
all metaphysical truth, and it ought never to 
be forgotten or neglected. Words, symbols, 
or signs, are one factor in knowledge, are one 
factor in truth, and are necessarily so in the 
contemplation of the human mind. Men can 
compare their Words, but, except through 
their words, they are wholly unable to com- 
pare their Ideas. The existence of their 
ideas can only be proved and exhibited by 
the existence of their words. 



64 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 1. 



CHAPTER III. 

REALISM — IDEALISM — NOMINALISM. 

(1.) Mr. Herbert Spencer's Realism. — If 
it had not been for Mr. Herbert Spencer's 
late book in English on Psychology, pretend- 
ing to prove what he is pleased to term realism, 
I should have thought it idle, at the present 
day in England, to discuss further the ques- 
tion between realism and every phase of 
idealism. Mr. Mill, writing before Mr. Spen- 
cer's work appeared, says, " Berkeley's doc- 
trine is in substance admitted — the idealists 
have established their case." 

Whether it is just to attribute to Berkeley 
what Kant calls a dogmatical idealism, that 
is the positive assertion that we know that 



C.m.,§l.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 65 

matter, the non-thinking thing, does not exist 
at all, external to man's mind, is a question 
of persons, i. e. 9 of Berkeley's meaning, rather 
than of things. We may assert the defective- 
ness of a proof without asserting the contrary 
dogmatically ; but how any author of ability, 
who can put words together on some subjects 
with clearness and accuracy, can profess to 
maintain pure realism, or man's knowledge 
of things in themselves, seems to me a marvel 
of mental confusion. But the marvel ceases 
when we find this same author dealing with 
the word " belief," and even when on his 
guard, and when his attention is directed to 
the subject, unable to divest his mind of the 
confusion of ordinary language, unable to dis- 
tinguish clearly between the thing believing 
and the thing believed, and the belief itself 
in the mind, but actually to confound the 
existence of the thing believed — " the sun" 
for example — with the existence of the belief 
in his own mind. 1 Such lucubrations may be 

1 Vide " Spencer's Psychology," p. 29, as to his belief in 
" the sun." Some of Mr. Spencer's writings are clear, use- 
ful, and practical ; but his mind seems to me confused by 



66 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., §1. 

alleged to prove realism, but they cannot be 
replied to, for they have no meaning ; they 
stand self-condemned by incoherency, in 
words open and manifest. 

Belief is one thing, knowledge another ; 
but if anything has been hitherto proved in 
metaphysics, it is, as Sir Wm. Hamilton says, 
that "external things in themselves cannot be 
known, and need not be known by man, be- 
cause a thing is never presented to us other- 
wise than as a phenomenon," and that " phe- 
nomena are mere representations." The 
simple truth is this, that the more we know 
of nature the more does she withdraw herself, 
and the more mysterious and unknowable 
does the real nature of the external world 
become. As our knowledge of nature in- 
creases, so do the difficulties of realism 
increase with it. When we have resolved 
water into two gases by electricity, we have 

the multitude of his thoughts of concrete existences. When 
he comes to discuss fundamental abstract thoughts, the 
meanings of life, society, property, belief, truth, &c., evapo- 
rate altogether, or are quite inadmissible. Let me tender 
him my thanks, however, as an Englishman, for his "Essay 
on Over-Legislation;" though we differ on fundamental 
abstractions, we do agree in some practical matters. 



C.iii.,;§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 67 

three puzzles before us instead of one, the 
relations between each with the other two 
and with itself. If Ave could now discover 
methods of resolving all external things into 
six or seven instead of the sixty or seventy 
insoluble elements now known, we should be 
multiplying the complexity of the phenomena 
tenfold. It would require ten times the 
number of phenomena, each of which is an 
insoluble puzzle, to produce external nature 
with seven simples in place of seventy, and 
we should not be a whit nearer the reality of 
the matter. 

Mr. Mill clearly perceives and well ex- 
presses this truth. " The result of this sim- 
plifying process is to trace up an ever greater 
variety of different effects to the same agents. 
The further we advance in this direction, the 
greater number of distinct properties we are 
forced to recognise in one and the same 
object." 1 In short, the greater our knowledge 
of external nature, the more complex, instead 
of the more simple, does nature herself be- 
come, in a realistic point of view. 

1 " Logic," ii., p. 108. 



68 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m , § 1. 

" All our knowledge begins with sense, 
proceeds thence to understanding, and ends 
with reason. Nothing higher can be dis- 
covered in the human mind," says Kant; and 
then he confesses himself " in some difficulty 
to give an explanation of this, the highest 
faculty of cognition." But one thing is made 
clear by his argument beyond rational dispute, 
that all the phenomena that affect our senses, 
and which pass thence to the tender standing, 
and are dealt with by the reason, can only 
there receive a mental solution, an ideal sim- 
plicity, a rational and verbal explanation. 
" The reality of the objects which we perceive 
still remains a profound and apparently in- 
soluble problem." 1 When men so much op- 
posed in many of their views of philosophy 
as Mr. Mill and Dr. Whewell, agree in their 
view of what all preceding philosophy has 
done or left undone ; where our own reason, 
as well as we can use it, confirms the result, 
it seems a waste of time to attempt to bolster 
up their conclusion, or to review and restate 
the arguments from Kant downwards, that 

1 Dr. Whewell, " Ph. of Disc," p. 488. 



Cm., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 69 

have never been answered intelligibly, which 
show that things in themselves are unknowable. 
When, therefore, Mr. Spencer says, " If it 
be alleged that we cannot know that things 
exist as we understand them to exist, because 
we cannot transcend consciousness, then there 
is at once taken for granted the validity of 
that test whose validity is called in question ; 
the universal postulate is assumed and denied 
in the same breath." 1 We merely answer, no ! 
your universal postulate is neither assumed 
nor denied, because it is unmeaning. You 
yourself have used in your so-called postulate 
the word " belief," either in two senses or in 
none at all, for you cannot or do not tell us 
in which sense of your two acknowledged 
senses you use it. But this word " belief" 
involves the whole question at issue, viz., the 
thing external to the rnind, and the thing not 
external but within the mind. Therefore, 
you either contradict yourself, or are in a 
state of unmeaning confusion on the subject 
of realistic belief and true knowledge. 

(2). Idealism Contradicted by the Laws of 

1 " Psychol.," p. 65. 



70 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [Cm., §2. 

Language. — Having disposed of dogmatic 
realism without argument on the authority 
of the reasons already adduced by Berkeley, 
Kant, and their followers, to prove man's 
ignorance of things in them selves, we assume 
it as already clearly proved, that all external 
things in themselves are unknowable ; that 
" we know and can know nothing absolutely 
in itself." 1 In short, it is clear that man's 
body stands between his mind and external 
nature, an impassable barrier, rendering exter- 
nal things in themselves unknowable, and re- 
ducing the entire sphere of man's knowledge 
to the phenomena or appearances which are 
transmitted by the human senses to the human 
mind. Nevertheless, every language of every 
human race utterly contradicts this philoso- 
phic creed. Man is a universal realist in 
every nation under the sun ; every tongue 
openly contradicts this philosophic conclusion, 
and every now and then we may therefore 
expect some word-puzzled philosophers to 
arise, who, confounded by the common words 
they are compelled to use in order to express 

1 Sir W. Hamilton, " Lect. IX.," vol. L, p. 85. 



Cm., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 71 

themselves intelligibly to their fellow men in 
ordinary language, will again and again 
attempt to prove that their "words do mean 
things in themselves," and will try to use the 
common convention or agreement of mankind 
to overturn a creed which ordinary language 
contradicts in every word. In spite of our 
philosophy, whenever we talk we are consi- 
dered to be bound by the common convention 
or agreement of mankind, and that our word 
" tree" for example, means the external thing 
which, we say, we see and touch, and not that 
minute infinitesimal pulsation which passes 
along our optic or other nerves, into the grey 
cellular matter of the brain ; that something 
which we can stop and annihilate in its passage 
by merely nicking the microscopic nerve ; that 
something which must in some way exist in 
one or more of the myriads of the micro- 
scopic cells of which the grey cellular matter 
of the human brain visibly consists. Language 
is too powerful, its laws are too strong for 
us ; the common agreement of mankind is 
felt too binding to be thrown off, for we can- 
not speak without submitting to it, and we 



72 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §3. 

go on and cannot avoid going on speaking 
with our tongues, concerning the great ex- 
ternal tree existing in nature, instead of con- 
cerning the minute microscopic cells or their 
contents actually existing in our several 
brains. But belief is one thing, and know- 
ledge another, and language a third. The 
realist may be very right in his belief, but he 
is certainly wrong in his alleged knowledge 
and in reason. Although, therefore, we all 
practically subscribe to his belief, i. e. 9 to the 
ordinary creed of mankind that things exist 
external to man, as men generally suppose 
them to exist, we say, be not afraid of mate- 
rialism from admitting clear fact and truth 
concerning the human brain, quite consistent 
with the doctrine that external things in them- 
selves are wholly unknowable. 

(3.) Belief of the Real, Knowledge of the 
Ideal. — So far as I can believe anything 
which I do not know, and which my reason 
tells me that I cannot mentally know, I 
frankly subscribe to the ordinary creed of 
realism, being at the same time convinced that 
no amount of argument can ever prove to 



C.ni., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 73 

my mind the actual existence of the inkstand 
before me. There is no mystery here except 
the one insoluble mystery of human nature, 
the union of body and mind ; which mystery 
the thoughtful peasant can see as clearly as 
the deepest philosopher ; the vast mystery of 
the conjoint existence of a material body and 
an immaterial mind ; of a living person and a 
dying thing conjoined in one mysterious whole. 
If a man sets out by resolving to believe in 
the existence of nothing but what can be 
proved by reason, then he had better shut his 
eyes and his ears, for he can never believe in 
anything but the existence of himself. 
" Whatever is against right reason, that no 
faith can oblige us to believe," but " our faith 
ought to be larger than our reason, and take 
something into her heart." I go further than 
Jeremy Taylor, and say that it must be larger 
than our reason, and take something into our 
intellect that reason can never prove, not only 
in those higher transcendental moralities, but 
in the lowest and most vulgar concrete actu- 
alities that are at the ends of our noses and 
fingers. 

E 



74 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 3. 

The knowledge of the idealist is not incon- 
sistent with the creed of realism. It is the 
man who has found the true limits of his 
knowledge whose faith must be at once the 
greatest and the most firmly established, being 
founded on the rock of truth. 

Mankind believes in the reality of things, 
and we cannot almost use a single sentence of 
ordinary language without admitting in words 
that belief. But that reality, I say with 
Kant and all his followers, man is so consti- 
tuted, that he can never know it ; but I go 
further : I say that man is so constituted, 
that he cannot even speak of, or form any 
word or sign whatever, to express or repre- 
sent that reality in which nevertheless his 
nature and his circumstances compel him to 
believe. Thus I say that human language is 
in its origin founded on an illusion, a mis- 
take ; and this it is which in my opinion lies 
at the root and is the true solution of all the 
squabbles of Philosophy. 

The question has never yet, as I conceive, 
been properly ventilated and answered, or 
rather I would more humbly say that the 



Cm., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 75 

answer has been lost and buried in the pride 
and self will of the learned. What are words? 
what is true nominalism? If we consider 
realism as refuted, and dogmatic idealism as 
refuted, and that the true doctrine is that 
laid down by Berkeley, Kant, and the mode- 
rate of Kant's followers down to Sir W. 
Hamilton and Professor Ferrier, that things in 
themselves are unknowable, and that we only 
can know their appearances or phenomena re- 
latively to our own minds, the question still 
remains, what part do words take in human 
knowledge? There is still the old medieval 
question about nominalism just as unsettled, 
and in as great or greater confusion, than ever. 
(4.) Mediaeval Realism, Modern Idealism. 
— It is to be observed that the mediaeval con- 
troversy between realist and nominalist, was 
different from that between modern realism 
and idealism, for the mediaeval realist agreed 
with the modern idealist. The word realist 
has come to mean a different thing since the 
days of Reid. The ancient nominalist said 
that general terms, i. e., universal words, had 
no external representatives in external nature, 

E 2 



76 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §4. 

but were only creations of the human mind ; 
the ancient realist said that they had ; viz., 
what Plato called divine ideas. M The fun- 
damental principle of ancient nominalism 
was as follows : reality only exists in indi- 
vidual external things. Universals are merely 
notions of the understanding without reality, 
which notions are only designated objectively 
through language, and thence receive an 
appearance of reality, although they them- 
selves neither contain a reality, nor do they 
correspond to a reality. The principle of 
ancient realism, on the contrary, was this : 
there is no reality in individual external 
things ; universals are the true reality, and 
individuals, as such, are only distinguished by 
accidents." The ancient realist was nearly 
identical with the modern dogmatic idealist 
in denying the reality of external nature as 
we perceive it. The modern dogmatic realists, 
from Reid downwards, agree in part with the 
ancient nominalist, in asserting the reality of 
external individual things as we perceive 
them. 

But it is very idle and useless work discuss- 



C. in., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 77 

ing schools of thought or philosophy. The 
really important question is, what we ought 
to think ourselves, and how we ought to 
express it. 

The ancient controversy between realist 
and nominalist, was a dispute concerning the 
things meant by universals, z. e. 9 general terms. 
Modern inductive philosophy has so filled 
men's minds since the days of Bacon, that 
men have begun to think that all verbal 
questions are merely deserving of contempt ; 
that men can get on without minding words 
at all, and, in short, that words take no part in 
inductive philosophy whatever. They think 
they are talking about things themselves 
existing in external nature in place of about 
their own words for things. They think that 
gravity, and forces, and affinities, and po- 
larity, &c, &c, are things really existing in 
external nature, and not mere human words 
for human imaginations. They think these 
words, and all scientific words, represent 
external realities, and not merely internal 
idealities invented by man for his own con- 
venience in talking, and which the breath of 



78 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 5. 

man hereafter may blow to nothings, when- 
ever some greater truth may be discovered or 
revealed. 

(5.) True Nominalism. I assert that man 
cannot possibly speak of external reality ! 
It is entirely beyond his power to speak of 
things external to his own mind. The con- 
vention and agreement of mankind cannot 
alter the nature of things and words. Our 
agreement about our words cannot alter truth. 
It is evident that man's words either have no 
meanings, and so are empty sounds, or no- 
thing but vibrations of his larynx and pulsa- 
tions of the air, signs unintelligible ; or, they 
are words and have meanings, and are signs 
of the true meanings in the mind, not signs 
of the real things, whatever they are, of which 
the mind may suppose itself thinking. When 
I say my word tree means the real tree, I con- 
tradict myself in obedience to or concurrence 
with the common convention or agreement of 
mankind as to language. My word can mean 
my meaning only ; my word can only express 
my thought, idea, perception, conception, &c, 
my state of mind : that something in the 



C. iil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 79 

brain or mind which causes my larynx and 
tongue to speak. My word tree cannot pos- 
sibly mean anything but my own individual 
thought or meaning, the thing in my own 
mind upon, or about, or produced by the real 
tree, and not the real tree itself. Man's 
words, therefore, cannot possibly mean any- 
thing but each man's own private meanings, 
call them by what name you please, thoughts, 
ideas, impressions, sensations, reflexions, con- 
ceptions, representations, or intuitions, &c. ; 
whatever words we choose, from age to age, 
from school to school, to give to the com- 
pleted act of the mind in thinking, ending in 
a vibration of the larynx, or a stroke of the 
pen. Words, therefore, in themselves, if in- 
telligible, are not, and cannot possibly be, signs 
of realities external to thfe mind, but only signs 
of thoughts or meanings in the mind of the 
man using the words. It is, therefore, impos- 
sible for men to speak of real things except 
the real things in his own personal individual 
mind. He cannot speak of his neighbour's 
thoughts, but only of his own thoughts of, 
or upon, or about his neighbour's thoughts 



80 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §5. 

as transmitted to him by his neighbour's 
words, deeds, signs, and symbols. 

However earnestly, therefore, a number of 
men may believe, and agree in believing, 
that their words entirely and truthfully repre- 
sent external things, or internal thoughts, as 
they really exist, words, according to God's 
constitution of man, cannot do so. Words, 
in themselves, only represent, and can only 
represent the truthfully believed thoughts in 
the mind, or things in the brain, of each true 
thinker, making, or adopting, and so using 
the words. The materialist may say things 
in the brain, we say thoughts in the mind. We 
are not now discussing materialism, but words. 

The only reality, therefore, of which man 
can possibly, according to his constitution, 
speak or make any sign, is the internal reality 
of his own thoughts in his own individual 
mind. He cannot possibly speak of external 
reality ; or of any other man's internal reality. 

So long as man is clothed with a body, so 
long man's body must continue to stand an 
utterly impassable barrier between the reality 
in each man's mind, and all other real exist- 



C.iii.,§5.] THE SCIEx\CE OF TRUTH. 81 

ence whatever, whether mental, or bodily, or 
verbal, except only such other independent 
mental existences, whether deity, demon, spirit, 
or angel, as can communicate with man's 
mind directly and spiritually, and not indi- 
rectly through his senses as man communicates 
with man. 

Men can know their agreement in words, 
but they can know their agreement in nothing- 
else whatever. Their senses tell men whether 
they agree in their words, by their actively 
using the same words ; but they never can 
know whether they agree in their thoughts 
or minds. Men can discuss their words, but 
they can discuss nothing else whatever ; they 
are prevented by their constitution from even 
speaking to themselves of things as they really 
exist external to their own minds. I cannot 
speak or make a sign to myself of the real 
tree, much less can I speak it to my neighbour, 
between whose mind and my own, two impas- 
sible bodies are interposed. To be sure, we 
two can enter into a convention or agreement 
about our words, what we shall do, or say, or 
think, when we hear, or read, or see, or feel ; 

E 5 



82 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 5. 

but our convention, our agreement, cannot 
alter the fact, or in any way affect the ex- 
ternal fact in nature, or the truth of things. 
Our agreement, that the sound or symbol 
tree shall be taken between us to be the sign 
of the real tree, cannot make the sound or 
symbol in itself a sign or representation of the 
real tree, which is separated from our minds 
by our bodies. It still remains, when I use 
the word, the sign of the thought in my mind, 
and, when you use the word, the sign of the 
thought in your mind. It is so, has always 
been so, and will remain so whilst our minds 
are imprisoned in our bodies. This is simple 
fact and truth, unless we choose to contradict 
ourselves, or to say that the thing in my 
mind now writing, and the thing in your 
mind, reading these words, are one and the 
same thing, which is most certainly absurd. 

Almost all the disputes of philosophers 
have arisen from not seeing, or erroneously 
seeing this truth. But it necessarily follows, 
that all human knowledge, all human science 
communicable from man to man, whilst im- 
prisoned in these mortal bodies, consists of 



Cm., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 83 

words only, words expressing thoughts in the 
mind of the thinker, thoughts known only to 
himself and such Powers higher than man, 
by whom the power of reading man's thoughts 
is possessed. Men's minds are different, men's 
senses, which convey the phenomena to their 
minds, are different, and the only factors in 
knowledge which we have in common, are our 
words. There are truths of mind, and truths 
of bodies, and truths of words, but the only 
possible agreement between men in respect 
of any truth, is agreement in words, and in 
words only. Men say they have a know- 
ledge of minds, and of bodies, and of words; 
but however earnestly they think that they 
agree in their knowledge of minds and bodies, 
their only agreement is an agreement in the 
words, signs, and symbols expressing the 
knowledge. 

Why should we be afraid of this truth ? 
Man's agreement in knowledge is merely 
agreement in words ! If any trembling be- 
liever, or any untrembling worshipper of in- 
tellect, the two extremes of human faith and 
faithlessness, thinks that this conclusion is 



84 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 6. 

dangerous, or lowers the dignity of human 
science, we answer, No ! It is truth, and 
raises the dignity of human words ! We be- 
come better fitted to believe that " for every 
idle word that men do speak they shall give 
account in the Day of Judgment, and that 
by our words we shall be justified, or by 
our words we shall stand condemned." Men- 
tally ! spiritually ! each man stands alone in 
the universe of existence, with his own mind 
and with his own words, and with the being 
or beings to whom he is responsible. Man 
cannot get beyond his mind, his body, and 
the deeds or symbols made by his body. This 
is a deep truth, and worthy of earnest reflec- 
tion. All agreement in knowledge is only 
agreement in words. 

(6.) The Convention of Language. — But it 
may be asked, is there any objection to the 
mutual convention and agreement of mankind, 
that their words shall be taken and deemed to 
stand as or be signs of the real external exist- 
ences, or the real internal existences, which 
produce the phenomena which lead men to 
speak, and give names to external things or 



Cm., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 85 

internal thoughts ? To which I would reply, 
that to any honest bargain or convention 
between mankind, there can be no sort of ob- 
jection, always provided men keep constantly 
in mind that their bargain, their mutual 
agreement and convention, is not truth and 
cannot alter the scientific necessity, the 
never ceasing truth, arising out of the nature 
of man himself, a mind imprisoned in a body, 
that in truth his words can only express the 
private thoughts in the mind of each indi- 
vidual thinker; that they -cannot represent in 
truth, in themselves, any real external things 
whatever, or the real internal thoughts or 
ideas of any other human being of which 
reality he tries to think, or does think, 
whether truly or falsely. 

But confusion becomes intolerable, and sci- 
entific discussion can have no end until every 
scientific man clearly sees, and holds, and 
submits to this truth. Science and phi- 
losophy cannot possibly discuss, cannot 
possibly speak of real existences, mental or 
bodily ; they can only speak of, or discuss 
human words ! 



86 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §6. 

What then is truth, but those true words 
which no man can deny without, at the same 
time, contradicting his own conscience, and 
contradicting his own words ? The object of 
the honest logician, of the true philosopher, 
the earnest and truthful teacher and preacher, 
is to take the words of mankind and to teach 
them to think correctly, by using words cor- 
rectly, to teach them the truth which their 
words admit, and to urge them to hold it 
fast. Some wise man or silly being has said, 
that words are the counters of wise men and 
the money of fools. But, in order to become 
truly wise, men must become fools, and turn 
their words into good money, and feel that 
every word they use is worth more than gold, 
for it embodies the very heart and spirit of 
the man who truly uses it, and for eternal 
weal or woe may affect the living spirit of 
every fellow man to whose eyes and ears it 
may come, laden with emotion, intelligence, 
sentiment, or will. 

Words ! the office of words, therefore, is 
the problem of all philosophy. My words 
cannot mean your thoughts ; your words can- 



C. iil, § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 87 

not mean my thoughts. Men can agree in 
their words, but this is the only agreement that 
can be possibly known between them. Their 
thoughts must for ever, whilst their minds 
are clothed with bodies, remain wholly and 
entirely unknown to each other. They can 
know whether their words agree ; they can 
never, in this world, know whether their 
thoughts agree ; but, from the agreement of 
their words, they can trust and believe that 
their thoughts do also agree. Two human 
minds are, in reality, as completely or more 
completely divided and separated, than one 
mind and one external body or any phenomena 
it presents. The words of one man are only 
phenomena or appearances to another; they 
strike his ear or his eye ; they seem to rouse 
or soothe his restless spirit, or his intelligence. 
He adopts, he loves, he uses, and agrees to 
use the words ; they seem to convey to his 
mind the certainty of truth. To him they re- 
present truth ; that something for which he 
might dare to die, rather than give it up, or 
confess it to be false ; that truth which he 
knows ; that truth which he feels ; that truth 



8 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 6. 

which has made him free ! We must come, 
therefore, to some rational agreement and 
convention about our words, the words we use 
in common. 

Words, we say, do not and cannot express 
minds or things in themselves ; or the phe- 
nomena of other minds, or of other things, or 
anything else than the thoughts or meanings 
in the mind of each individual thinker and his 
thoughts alone. 

Man's conventions and mutual agreements 
about words, whether for the purposes of or- 
dinary life or for scientific discussion, do not 
alter the real nature of words themselves : 
they are the only representatives of human 
knowledge, the only records of human sci- 
ence. And surely it is time that men should 
feel some real responsibility for the words 
they use ; surely it is time that men of sci- 
ence, men who profess to lead and to teach 
their fellow men, should come to some rati- 
onal agreement, some convention more scien- 
tific than the agreement or convention made 
by every savage under the sun. There are 
true thoughts. We all admit and believe it. 
How are we to make, how are we to hold 



C. in., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 89 

fast, true words ? We have nothing else in 
the shape of truth to offer to our fellow men 
as the offspring of our minds, but true words. 
But perhaps you may say, that words are 
also external things, and, therefore, in them- 
selves unknowable like other external things ; 
but here lies the difference between words 
and all other things external or internal. 
Man's words can be, and are at the same time, 
and at different times, both external and in- 
ternal things to different men. They can' pass 
and repass, along different mens' incarrying 
nerves, and back again, along their outcarrying 
nerves, and can be returned from man to man, 
reviewed, and accepted or rejected ; or altered 
and improved from age to age, as Man is per- 
mitted to approach nearer and nearer to the 
Truth. It is surely time, therefore, that our 
truths should receive some intelligible shape, 
and that our words should have some scientific 
value, some known and acknowledged stan- 
dard, to which men of science should conform. 
This is the first step in, and this is the real 
problem of all true philosophy. Let us now 
consider it. What is true nominalism ? What 
are man's words in truth ? 



9 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 1 . 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY. — WORDS. 

(1.) Recapitulation. — Let us first recapitu- 
late the course of argument hitherto adopted. 
The reader will have perceived that, starting 
with the admission of ONE existence, which we 
called knowledge, and which we showed that no 
one could refuse to grant us, without self-con- 
tradiction, we, by deduction from this WORD, 
signifying the thing called knowledge, erected 
a Trinity of things — a mind, a thing, and a 
word; the three factors in knowledge, of 
necessity, following by deduction from our 
first assumption. But, as knowledge is itself 
plural, including your knowledge and mine, 
and that of every man and being in existence, 






C. iv., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 91 

we have three classes or categories, which we 
say are the names of all admitted existences, 
none of which can be denied to us by any 
man who speaks, without he contradicts 
himself, viz. — 

Minds or mental things ; 
Things or bodily things ; 
And words, signs, or symbols — verbal things. 

But, as minds and words are things, we are 
compelled, for clear speaking, to assume a new 
name for those things which are neither minds 
nor words ; and we shall call them bodies, so 
that our three classes are — mental things, 
bodily things, and verbal things, Minds, 
Bodies, and Words. We think and say, that 
nothing else can be known or thought of but 
these three and their relations. Being, by 
presumption, or for the sake of argument, 
altogether ignorant of these three things, 
of their likenesses, or their differences, or 
of anything about them, save only their 
necessary — that is, their never-ceasing and 
distinct — existence, deduced from the ne- 
cessary or never-ceasing nature or meaning 



92 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 1. 

of the existence first admitted, we did, as 
bound by the laws of science and of scepticism, 
treat them at first, as in reason, all alike, and 
up to the present time undistinguishable in 
their nature ; and, therefore, assumed neces- 
sarily like symbols for each, and called those 
symbols units. By this process of making or 
manufacturing words or symbols, we found 
ourselves at once in possession of one, two, 
and three units ; and thence by repeating the 
process as often as we please, adding unit after 
unit, and giving a new name at each step, we 
arrived at all numbers and at all symbolic 
arithmetic. Numbers are, therefore, merely 
accurate words or symbols, or names, for 
bundles of units or signs, made alike by men. 
Nine, or the number 9, means all the units m 
nine, and so of every number, as far as we 
choose to count. 

If arithmetic be knowledge, which it cer- 
tainly is, it consists merely of signs, symbols, 
or words, made alike by men ; one and one are 
two, two and one are three, three and one are 
four — thus giving a new name at each step. 
We thus wholly avoid all philosophic squab- 



C.iv.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 93 

bling about abstraction; for, starting with 
assumed ignorance of Minds, Bodies, and 
Words, we had nothing to abstract ; and 
as to likeness and classification, we actually 
make the likeness with our mouth, our pen, 
or our printer's ink. Thus, as Pythagoras did 
more than two thousand years ago, we began 
with numbers as the first foundation of all 
human truth and certainty — our first step in 
knowledge. 

(2.) Numbers are General Terms or Uni- 
versals. — Numbers, therefore, are what phi- 
losophers call general terms, universal words 
— meaning all the units in the number. Nine 
means all the units in nine, and ten all the 
units in ten ; and so of every number, it is a 
general term, a universal word, a sign, mark, 
name, or ticket to a bundle of units — by which 
word, sign, mark, or name, men know it again 
or make their fellow men know it, who are able 
to make and use the same words or signs, and to 
so count or build up numbers in the same way. 
The certainty of numbers is, therefore, the cer- 
tainty of human words or signs — units made 
alike by man's voice, and hands, and labour. 



94 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 2. 

We then spent a little time with the old logical 
dames, Barbara and Celarent, refuting a great 
logician's very transparent absurdity of found- 
ing the certainty of numbers on induction, 
which itself includes numeration or numbers, 
and is founded thereon ; and not unwillingly 
found ourselves ranged on the side of Plato 
and Newton, in opposition to Mill and Spencer. 
We have since glanced at those problems which 
have divided philosophers in all ages, and are 
still as unsettled as ever, not with a view of 
discussing them, which is not the object of 
this work, but in order to show the need of 
some newer and better foundation for building 
truth on than has hitherto been adopted. In 
short, I have intended to lead the reader up 
to the fence we have to get over in our hunt 
after truth — a fence more full of ugly places, 
where philosophers have attempted to cross 
and been lost, than any fence in England — 
viz., how we are to show by words and signs 
how words and signs are to he understood, how 
words are to have some fixed and necessary 
meaning amongst philosophers and searchers 
after truth. 



Civ., §3.] THE SCIExXCE OF TRUTH. 95 

(3.) Whewell and Mill on Language. — 
Alas ! poor human nature has been groaning 
and sighing after truth for six thousand years, 
and for one grain of wheat she has got six 
bushels of chaff at least. But all knowledge, 
all science, all philosophy, that ever has ex 
isted, or that ever can, so far as we know, 
exist amongst men, must be thrown into 
words or human signs and symbols. Know- 
ledge, science, philosophy, without words, is 
an absurdity, a self-contradiction. So men 
set out with their words to build a tower to 
reach Heaven, and the result is a Babel. Is 
it not so, gentle reader, learned or unlearned, 
who has climbed after truth, or longed for 
truth to come out of the mist, at the top of 
the building, of learned or unlearned words ? 
Is the foundation yet laid ? We can neither 
teach nor learn without language, yet read 
the following sentence from one of the most 
able and most learned men in all England — 
learned in all the round of sciences, one whose 
own History of scientific ideas is calculated to 
do more to show us how truth and certainty 
has been, or can be reached than any modern 



96 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§3. 

work that I know of in English. Hear Dr. 
Whewell. 

" Language is often called an instrument of 
thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought, 
or rather it is the atmosphere in which thought 
lives : a medium essential to the activity of 
our speculative power, although invisible and 
imperceptible in its operations ; and an element 
modifying by its qualities and changes the 
growth and complexion of the faculties which 
it feeds." l 

Here, indeed, is a Protean character for Lan- 
guage ! Truth is simple, and there is a truth 
hidden under this Babel of symbols. Words, 
we are told, are an instrument, a nutriment, 
an atmosphere, an essential medium, an ele- 
ment, invisible, imperceptible in its action ; 
yet that action modifies man's faculties ! Is 
this the simplicity, the certainty of truth? 
Is it not passing strange that able and learned 
men should go on digging for gold with no 
better pickaxe than what Dr. Whewell so 
graphically describes as the language of science 

1 Whewell, " Hist. Scien. Ideas." Book III., chap, x., 
vol. i., p. 286. 



Civ., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 97 

and philosophy? And "the History of 
Science" is, he tells us, his Dictionary — rather 
an extensive dictionary to open and turn up, 
in order to understand this " nutritious, in- 
strumental atmosphere," or to arrive at the 
" invisible operations of this essential medium 
upon man's faculties." Hear Mr. Mill, on the 
other hand, his logical opponent ! 

" We think, indeed, to a considerable extent 
by means of names [words], but what we 
think of are the things called by those names. 
There cannot be a greater error than to ima- 
gine that thought can be carried on with 
nothing in our mind but names, or that we 
can make the names think for us." l 

But then names, mere denotatives, says Mr. 
Mill, have, "strictly speaking, no significa- 
tion" so that we think of things, and, to a 
considerable extent, by means of nothings, or 
things with no signification. Dr. Whewell 
describes a Proteus, an invisible air, modify- 
ing man's faculties. "Pugh!" says Mr. Mill, 
u general terms have no signification. This 

1 Logic, i., p. 200. 



8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 4. 

Proteus is, strictly speaking, nothing; but we 
think to a considerable extent by means of it, 
nevertheless." Here is a nice dispute about 
words and language between two of the ablest 
men in England, but the dispute is as old as 
philosophy itself. 

(4.) The Logical Result. — In such a philo- 
sophic dispute, if bound to choose, I should 
prefer siding with the man who, at least, does 
not contradict himself. Dr. Whewell says 
words are something, and adheres to it. Mr. 
Mill says they are nothing, and does not 
adhere to it ! This is the logical view of 
the dispute. But we are discussing the fun- 
damental meaning, not the logical use of 
words. Adam Smith said that we might give 
any man a fortnight to tell us the meaning of 
the word " of," and at the end we need 
hardly expect a rational answer. Home 
Tooke solved that problem by an induction, 
which induces most Englishmen to believe 
that all words were originally nouns or verbs. 

When we have got that length, it is very 
easy, and I say necessary, for a logician to 
reduce them all to nouns or names connected 



C.iv.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 99 

by the copula. John beats Harry, means only 
John is [a beater of Harry] . With the greatest 
deference to Dr. Whately and Mr, Mill, I 
venture to think " attributives" and " connota- 
tives " wholly out of place in logic, in all true 
mental reasoning, however needful they may 
be in order to translate our reasoning into 
ordinary language and grammar. The copula 
appears to me to express always existence or 
equality — i.e., a proposition or an equation. 
Analogy, or qualitative reasoning, is the 
equality of ratios. A ratio is clearly a 
mental existence. Lastly, by quantifying the 
predicate, in my opinion, every affirmative 
proposition can be reduced to an equation ; 
but to reduce a negative proposition may re- 
quire the impossible quantity. 

Having thus shortly alluded to the existing 
state of the science of words in England, by 
two great examples of its confusion, I proceed 
to demonstrate what words are in themselves, 
and in fact and truth — i.e., in true thought, if 
we are consistent in the use made of language 
by all men whomsoever. 

(5) All General Words are Numbers. — We 

F 2 



100 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§5. 

• 

have already demonstrated that arithmetical 
numbers are general terms, or universals, i. e., 
words signifying all the units comprised under 
the name. Ten means all the units in ten, and 
fifty all the units in fifty. Pure arithmetical 
numbers, therefore, are general terms, the only 
perfect ones in any language, each number is 
distinctly marked and separated from every 
other number, whether our numbers are formed 
on the binary, quinary, decimal, or any other 
system of arithmetic, and as far as ever we 
can count, i. e., till we choose to leave off. 

As all numbers are general terms, so I say 
all general terms are numbers. This is a 
truth which every peasant who ever spoke, as 
well as every philosopher who ever wrote cr 
spoke, has, I say, admitted, and must admit. 
Of course, as long as error exists, men must 
contradict themselves. All error may be 
reduced to self-contradiction, for we cannot 
reason with a man till he will admit some- 
thing, and the object of the true and faithful 
logician is to gain the admission of a truth 
from which the self-contradiction may be de- 
monstrated. But all philosophers have ad- 



C. iv., § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 101 

mitted in man the power to generalize, or 
make general terms by abstraction. Now, 
the meaning of every general term, in every 
language under the sun, is, that it shall stand 
for and represent the class; the whole number 
of things called by the term or name. When- 
ever we use the word man or tree, we always, 
whether peasant or philosopher, mean the 
whole number of things called men or trees ; 
man means all mankind, the ivhole number 
of men who ever did, or do, or shall exist, 
referred to by the speaker. The same is 
true not only of visible bodily things, but 
of invisible mental things ; say, virtue or 
intellect. We mean by virtue the whole 
number of mental thoughts and acts called 
virtuous, or by intellect the whole number of 
mental powers or processes called intellectual. 
A class, kind, or family, is the whole number 
of units called by the name of the class. 
General terms or names, therefore, signify to 
every man who understands the language the 
whole number of the units of the class called 
by the general name. Every man who speaks 
intelligibly admits this; that every general 



102 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 5. 

or universal word is a number, the whole 
number, so called. 

But you will say, we don't know the arith- 
metical number of the class ! Well, what of 
that ? we did not know the number of the 
planets till Le Verrier and Adams discovered 
mathematically an invisible planet, and there 
are, no doubt, others yet undiscovered. But 
the word planet means all the planets that 
exist, not those only which we have seen with 
our telescopes, It means the whole number 
of planets going round our sun, whatever their 
number may be. This is a truth of words 
which every man in the world, savage and 
civilized, expressly admits. Every general 
term means and includes the whole number 
of units called by the general term. Let us 
hold this truth firm and fast, and keep it, and 
not contradict ourselves by using at one time 
our words, like all the rest of the world, to 
signify the whole number of things called by 
the name, and then say, like Mr. Mill, at 
another time, that our words are mere deno- 
tatives, and have, " strictly speaking, no sig- 
nification." This is self-contradiction; it is 



C. iv., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 103 

error, and not truth. It is, or seems to me, 
the fundamental error in Mr. Mill's Philo- 
sophy, the contradiction that confounds and 
confuses his mind. 

Well, then, a general word is a whole num- 
ber, and a number is a number of units. But 
the units meant by a word are not the units 
meant by a number, which we must now call 
an arithmetical number, to distinguish it from 
a verbal number. But still they are units. 
One man or one planet is a unit quite as 
much as one dot or one stroke, or as an arith- 
metical unit made on paper, and called one 
unit. The units of every word are different 
from the units of other words, but they are 
all units, men, trees, laws, or attributes; 
minds, bodies, words, or ratios, all are units, 

(6.) All General Terms are Products. — 
Now, as we made our arithmetical units alike 
by drawing strokes upon paper, for example; 
so we can make our verbal units alike by 
drawing words upon paper, which was com- 
monly called by the Greeks defining the 
general term. It is merely taking words, 
signs, or symbols, which we either make or see. 



104 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§6. 

If we look through distorted lenses or coloured 
spectacles, our units are likely to be drawn 
distorted or coloured. But it is the object 
of discussion to remove the spectacles, or say, 
for example, to remove the stereoscope, and 
show one solidity vanished, and two pictures, 
both flat, instead of one picture apparently 
quite solid. What passes for the most solid 
truth is sometimes altogether flat, stale, and 
unprofitable. 

If, for example, I say that every man is 
composed of body and mind, and that every 
man's mind is composed of soul and spirit, 
then, when I speak of mankind, I mean the 
whole number of units, each unit being com- 
posed of body -f- soul -J- spirit, that ever were 
or ever can be called men, and my word man, 
mankind, or men, means, and includes, and 
expresses all the bodies, all the souls, and all 
the spirits of mankind. Arithmetical units 
are simple units, but men are compound units. 
But each body is also a unit, and each soul 
is also a unit, and each spirit of man is also 
a unit, so that my word man, meaning the 
whole number of men, means the sum of the 



C. iv., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 105 

sums of these compound units, and that, I say, 
is a product, or man = body x soul x spirit, 
or a spirit into a soul into a body. This is 
clearly demonstrable. 

To the arithmetician who has properly 
learnt the grounds and elements of his science, 
I say that this is manifest. The summation 
of equal compound units is multiplication. 
Everybody knows that three times four means 
adding three fours — i. c, three compound 
units of four each — or four times three is 
adding four threes — i.e., four compound units 
of three each — that is, in multiplication to 
find the product we add compound units, 
in the one case of four, in the other case of 
three, therefore arithmetical numbers are bun- 
dles of simple units, and products are bundles 
of compound units ; and general words, or 
verbal numbers, are products of compound 
units. Of course the reader will understand 
that the choice of likenesses, family or class 
likenesses, which makes man ticket a bundle 
of such compound units with a name, word, 
or general term, depends entirely on the true 
or false perceptions which we have obtained of 

F 5 



106 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 7. 

one or more of the units. We can either 
choose what we believe to be true likenesses, 
as I have done in saying body, soul, and spirit 
for man, or else false likenesses, and find 
very little difficulty in making general terms 
to express our meaning. But we cannot leave 
well established likenesses out of well known 
and understood words, if we wish to be under- 
stood. Sometimes men do not wish to be 
understood, and more often the likenesses are 
neither well known nor well established. But 
no one can possibly deny the fact that every 
general term or name is a whole number, and 
is the product of the general terms which 
express the likenesses of the class of com- 
pound units called by the name. I subjoin at 
the end of this chapter, a more strict or 
scientific demonstration of this truth, which 
I first published nearly twenty years ago ; 
but the general reader will probably admit, 
as proved by the example above, that every 
general abstract term is the product of the 
abstract likenesses of its class of units. 

(7.) Denotatives and Connotatives, or At- 
tributives. — The distinction between denota- 



C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 107 

tives and connotatives, or attributives, ap- 
pears, to my mind, mere mental confusion. 
It introduces grammar into logic, and intro- 
duces into philosophy, secretly, and not 
openly, the notion " that one thing cannot be 
the attribute of another thing, that there is 
some fundamental and admitted contradic- 
tion or distinction between an object and its 
form, colour, or other attributes ; but if this 
be the fact, it should be proved, not assumed. 
It is quite true, that in ordinary language 
men distinguish between thoughts and things, 
between mental and bodily existences. But 
this distinction is the distinction between 
Minds and Bodies, and not a distinction in 
Words. All words, in logic, are at the same 
time denotatives and connotatives, and mean 
mental existences, i. e., mean at the same time 
both thoughts and things. And although a 
man chooses to say he is reasoning about ex- 
ternal bodily existences, or other men's mental 
existences, yet it is clear, as we have already 
shown and proved, that he is only reasoning, 
and can only reason, about what is in his own 
mind; about his own thoughts of such ex- 



108 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv., §7. 

ternal bodily or mental existences, and not 
about the external existences themselves* 
But to assume as well founded an original 
distinction in words, and to call the names of 
some sensible objects different from other 
words called names of our ideas, or of con- 
noted or connotable attributes of such objects, 
is to enable the reasoner to assume at any 
time as well founded a distinction in the 
things themselves, i. e., between the visible or 
sensible objects and the mental likenesses or 
attributes we discover in and attribute to 
them. We say, therefore, that every name, 
whether general or individual, every word, 
whether universal or singular, has, in honest 
logic, some meaning, some thought, some idea 
attached to it, and is, at the same time, both 
denotative and connotative, and it denotes an 
existence solely by its connotative meaning. 

We can turn every word into an adjective, 
and be perfectly understood, so far as the 
meaning is fixed. This is true even of proper 
names singular ; Socratic, Platonic, Kantian, 
connote certain loose ideas of the individual's 
philosophy. So in any family, any peculiarity 



C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 09 

of the individual is attached to the individual 
name. Such expressions as " Coming John 
over me" would be perfectly understood if 
John had any peculiarity sufficiently marked 
to justify the expression ; and every indi- 
vidual has such peculiarities known to his 
intimate associates. All England rang for 
some years with the name of Burke, the 
murderer, and every kind of violent destruc- 
tion was for a time called " Burking." The 
Reform Bill was to be " Burked," &c. And, 
a fortiori, all general names are always at 
the same time both denotatives and connota- 
tives, and signify both thoughts and things. 
The distinction, in short, seems to me only a 
covert and secret way of quietly assuming a 
distinction between certain things and certain 
other things ; between some ideas of external 
objects, and some ideas of other objects, not 
objects of our external senses. 

If such distinction exists, it must be proved, 
not assumed, as a distinction of words. All 
words are names of things, and connote the 
ideas or thoughts which give rise to, or are 
attached to the things. All words are, in 



110 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. 

truth, the bodies or embodiment of thoughts, 
and it is as absurd and erroneous to treat 
words as being ever at any time mere marks 
or denotatives, as to treat the dead body of a 
man as being a man : to treat a dead body 
without a mind as a man, is, in truth, the 
same thing as to treat a word as a mere mark 
or denotative only. If a word ever becomes 
such, it is dead, it ceases to be a sign of any- 
thing whatever, it has become an empty and 
unmeaning sound, an unintellisribleNblot. 

It is the duty, therefore, of every one who 
reasons about words, to express the factoids 
which in his opinion go to form the words. 
If he says the word is simple and indecompo- 
sable, then he is bound to show how, or by 
what observation or experiment, the thought 
can be produced in his mind ; to show what 
act or what action of body or mind produces 
the thought to which he intends his word to 
be applied by his fellow men. 

Let us now proceed, if possible, to exhibit 
some examples of the theory of words which 
we have been endeavouring to establish. We 
have deduced the word or thought of number 



C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 1 

from our first assumption, and we say that 
time and space are thoughts, and can also be 
deduced from our first postulate, and that 
they are not, as Kant supposed, mere vague, 
unmeaning somethings ; forms of thought 
necessary to all other thoughts, and yet not 
thoughts themselves. 

We deny Kant's assumptions, and propose 
to substitute in their place some clear and 
definite ideas and thoughts to be attached to 
these mysterious words, as some philosophers 
have considered them, Number, Time, and 
Space. 

Note. — To prove this truth ; that every general term 
is the product of the general terms, which express the like- 
nesses of the class of compound units called by the name, to 
those philosophers who get over geometrical problems " by 
intuition from a figure" {vide Spencer's Psychology), I give 
the following demonstration by a figure. 

Let the following figure be any number of units arranged 
in equal sums — 

1+1+1+1 
+ + + + 
1+1+1+1 
+ + + + 
1 +1+1 +1 



&c. 

If we stop at any time and count the units in the horizontal 
and perpendicular lines respectively, we have any two mul- 
tipliers, say 4 and 3, and we have three sums of four each 
looking at the page as it now stands, and four sums of three 



112 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. 

each by turning the page sideways, therefore n X n' = 
n' x n, and by multiplication therefore we mean the addi- 
tion or summation of equal sums, i.e., the addition of the 
compound units called sums, when we say four times three 
or three times four, and a product is a sum of compound 
units. We here, it will be again observed, make our sums 
of compound units equal without abstraction, in pure 
numbers-, for we have nothing to leave out, nothing to 
abstract ; that is, having in the beginning made our units 
as nearly equal as we could, we are wholly ignorant of their 
differences. But if we learnt to count on our fingers, we 
should have to abstract or cut off the differences of our 
fingers of course, until we learnt to make equal signs ; or, if 
the number cannot be arranged in equal sums, then it is a 
product -f part of a compound unit. 

Now, the mind goes through the same process exactly 
with every abstract or general term whatever, in consider- 
ing the units alike, and all philosophers say, and truly say, 
we abstract by not attending to the differences, though they 
be wholly or partially perceived. They say the mind knows 
that one man differs greatly from another man, or one 
tree differs greatly from another tree, and that when we 
speak of man in general, or trees in general, we abstract or 
leave out of our consideration our knowledge of these indi- 
vidual differences, and attend to the likenesses only. All 
philosophers agree in this, and it is quite true, so let us put 
the process into a visible figure. Take the abstract word, 
man or mankind. Each man, we have said = body -f 
soul 4- spirit. That is, my word, for each man, means one 
body 4- one soul -f- one spirit + a difference, say, a longer 
body, or a greater soul, or a finer spirit, therefore : 

Differences. 



John = body + soul 4- spirit 
Thomas = body 4- soul 4- spirit 



all &c. &c. 



4- &c. 
4- &c. 



and abstracting by cutting off the differences, as we have 
done by the upright line, then : all men = all human spirits 



C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 113 

+ all human souls + all human bodies, which words 
all, &c, are again sums of the compound units, body, soul 
and spirit, the abstract general words so called ; therefore 
our abstract or general term, Man = Body x Soul x Spirit ; 
the product of the general abstract terms body, soul, and 
spirit. Or taking letters, let A be an abstract term, and a 
a' a", &c, the units called by the name A; and let the like- 
nesses be expressed in the same manner by letters. We then 
have the whole class or abstract word A = all as = 



a = b + c + d 


+ x + y + &c. 


a' = b' + c' + d' 


+ x' + y' + &c. 


&c. = &c. 





And abstracting the differences known or unknown, as we 
have done by the upright line, we have all as = A = all 
bs -f- all cs + all ds = B. C. D., or the product of the 
abstract or general term B, into the abstract or general 
term C, into the abstract or general term D, for it is 
evident that the same process must be gone through with 
all the bs, and all the cs, and all the ds, therefore a = 
b + c + d, and the abstract general term A = B. CD, 
where B, C, D, are all also abstract terms. Therefore 
every abstract general term = the product of the like- 
nesses of a unit of the class ; such likenesses being them- 
selves considered in the abstract. 

This, therefore, is the whole difference between a number 
and an abstract word, the number is a number of simple 
units assumed to be like by man ; the word is a number of 
compound units, assumed like by man, and being com- 
pound, is the product of the abstract likenesses taken to 
form the class called by the name of the abstract term. If 
we had called man a rational animal, Man = Reason X 
Animal, and so for any other definition we please to give. 
Of course the reader will see that we ultimately arrive at 
the most abstract term known on the subject, which is itself 
X unity ; for example, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, 
affinity, polarity, matter, form, and so forth. We thus 
arrive at abstract terms indecomposable, so far as human 
knowledge has yet extended. 



114 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. 

Some may object that the proper representation of the 
abstract term A would be B + C + D, and not the product 
B. C. D ; but this would deny that the summation or ad- 
dition of compound sums is what we mean by a product, 
which I have first proved ; but, of course, the complication 
of verbal numbers is different from the multiplication of 
arithmetical numbers, because the units are different and 
the mental process is different, but yet the symbols may well 
be the same. And all difficulty perhaps is removed by con- 
sidering or assuming each compound unit not as a sum but as 
a, product of its likenesses; or a=b. c. d, and the abstracted 
differences as additions to a product — i.e., a = b. c. d -}- x, 
and abstracting the x then A=B. C. D. 

Perhaps, still more properly speaking, it should be said 
that A varies as, or is a function of the product, B. C. D. 
This function depends, of course, on the internal relations 
of b. c. d — the likenesses which produce the general word; 
but logically, we cannot distinguish between a product and 
the unknown function of a product. Thus, for example, 
the great discoveries of Newton were simply these — viz., 

that force is the product, M. S. ~r, or of Mass into the 

Space divided by the Time; and that gravity is the 

product of M. =— or of Mass divided by the Distance 

squared. The definition of knowledge given in the 

T 

text should be written thus, M. T ^, where M is not matter, 

W 

but mind, and T. and W. things and words. For knowledge 
increases with the powers of mind and with the number of 
things, but does not increase, but diminishes with the number 
of human words or signs required to express the knowledge. 
In self-knowledge, of course, the whole three become unity. 
And so, as stated in the text, this thought of the compo- 
sition or product of self-knowledge does not violate the 
unity of the Godhead, when we consider it as a Trinity in 
Unity. 



C. v., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 5 



CHAPTER V. 

NUMBER, TIME AND SPACE. 

(1.) The Foundations of Verbal Truth. — 
We have demonstrated, beyond cavil, as 
we trust, if such a thing be possible, that 
every number is a general term, and every 
general term a number ; that the arithmetical 
number is a word, sign, or symbol, signifying 
a sum, or ticketed bundle of simple units ; 
and that a word, general name, or verbal 
number is a 'product, or ticketed bundle of 
compound units. Every man who speaks and 
understands the rudiments of arithmetic and 
reason, must admit our conclusions so far. 

What we have written will probably meet 
with two classes of opponents : the haughty 
scoffer, the idly indifferent ; those who will 



116 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§l. 

ridicule what they will not understand, or 
cannot answer ; and those thoughtless ones 
who might stand at the brink of the deep 
foundations of some lofty building, on some 
low and level plain, and exclaim, what elabo- 
rate folly and trifling ! what waste of good 
materials ! lime, sand, and sifted stone thrown 
in deep below ground, where none will ever 
be able to see or use it. We cannot build 
safelv without a firm foundation ; but when a 
messenger knows his message to be true and 
important, he can stand the sneers and the 
jeers of a million of fellow beings. 

To such there is no reply, but charity, and 
pity, and love unfeigned. The thoughtless 
who ought to think, but never yet have 
thought, who skim their Paley or Coleridge, 
and have never felt any spiritual anxiety to 
settle the moral truth, or to solve the differ- 
ence, the life and death difference, between 
them ; or who read Whewell or Mill without 
any intellectual desire to know whether 
scientific truth is founded on induction or 
deduction; to these we would say, rouse 
yourselves, and strive to understand the im- 






C. v., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 117 

portance, the deep, the rational, the spiritual 
importance, the eternal importance of man's 
words, the words he uses or abuses, the words 
by which he will be judged ! judged as surely 
as there is a living God in or near to every 
one of us. Yes, God in or near ! that is the 
question which all of us have to answer for our- 
selves, each of us alone in his secret chamber, 
now, or at all events on his death bed. Is 
He in or near us ? What do your words really 
mean ? that is the hardest question ever put 
to man, and, reader, you must answer it for 
yourself, for no other man on earth can 
answer it for you, either now or hereafter. 

We may have a form of words, a form of 
godliness ; there is one in some of our hands 
once every week, and those who do not use 
the form, often profess to have more of the 
reality ; and what do we really mean by those 
words we use, or that thing we pray for, when 
we say on Sunday, " Cleanse the thoughts of 
our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy 
Spirit." There is a use and meaning, as well 
as an abuse and no-meaning, of such words as 
inbreathing, inspiration, &c. It is better not 



118 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 2. 

to use them at all, than to have no meaning 
to them. It is more honest to scoff openly, 
than to act the hypocrite, and scoff secretly 
on your knees in your heart. It is not neces- 
sary to confound the Creator with the creature, 
whether a thing or a person, to believe in 
idolatry or in Pantheism, or in the last Lo here! 
or Lo there ! yet it is necessary to believe that 
Christians u are builded together for an habi- 
tation of God through the Spirit." It is 
necessary to believe that " your body is the 
temple of the Holy Spirit," which God will 
give to those w 7 ho ask Him, " that Spirit of 
Truth which shall testify of Christ," and 
which he promised to send from the Father to 
dwell with man on earth. It is necessary to 
believe in the Word of God. 

(2.) Scientific Truth Requires a New Con- 
vention in Language. — We turn, however, to 
the scientific, and leave the moral question, 
what do our words really mean? I have 
shown you what they are ; true or false num- 
bers, of true or false units, and every man in 
the world admits this, or contradicts himself. 
But what do they really mean ? It is no use 



C. v., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 9 

saying that general words are numbers, 
and that numbers are general words ; that is 
as bad as saying or thinking that induction is 
founded on numbers of instances, and num- 
bers on induction, per enumtrationem sim- 
plicem ! as if a little Latin would make sense 
of nonsense, or authorise a logician to beat 
round the bush in that way, and then pretend 
that he has caught the bird. Such logic, 
however, might get you the name of a very 
advanced thinker at Westminster. 

The reader will perceive that I am using 
very ordinary English words, and as far as I 
can in the ordinary and conventional mean- 
ings, so that every Englishman can under- 
stand what 1 say. But I have long ago 
candidly avowed that my scientific theory 
and conventional practice are entirely opposed 
to one another. I avow the inconsistency in 
express words, and I have shown you that it 
is the established convention of mankind, that 
in order to be intelligible you must be thus in- 
consistent. But I intend, God willing, to show 
how both you and I may, if we choose, avoid 
such inconsistency as far as our intellectual 



120 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., §2. 

faculties and our moral qualities will enable 
each of us, i. e., better for the future, I hope. 

It is of no use, and very absurd to oppose 
or set oneself to violate the common conven- 
tion of all mankind in the use of words ; it is 
a breach of the original agreement made in 
infancy by us all, when we were taught our 
mother tongue. The agreement then made is 
made by all peoples, savage and civilized, in 
order to render themselves intelligible, viz., 
that ordinary words shall be signs or symbols 
of external things ; i. e., of things external to 
the mind of the speaker. It is also of no 
consequence to our argument, how language 
first began ; whether with such words as buzz, 
or whizz, or tick, or crack, to express verbs ; 
or with such words as cuckoo, and whip-poor- 
will, to express things. 

We have a language, and speak it under the 
implied condition and agreement to make our- 
selves intelligible to our fellow speakers. The 
original condition, convention, or agreement 
of all mankind, is that my word thought shall 
be deemed to be a sign or symbol, not only of 
the thought in my mind, but of the thought 



C. v., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 121 

in the mind of other men also, and that your 
word thought shall mean the same thing. This 
agreement may have arisen from men having 
occasion at first chiefly or only to speak of ex- 
ternal visible things, and not of internal minds, 
and so settling the laws of language, that they 
could not be conveniently altered to suit in- 
ternal nature when it came to be spoken of. 
The fact is so, whatever the cause may have 
been. 

However, from Plato downwards, phi- 
losophers have been trying to get out of 
this law, of words meaning external things, 
by trying to make words mean not external 
things, but internal things ; ideas, sensations, 
reflections, impressions, perceptions, concep- 
tions, intuitions, &c, &c, &c, confusing and 
contradicting each other, till so far as meta- 
physics and philosophy are concerned, the 
old joke of those witty Greeks is still as true 
as ever; that philosophy, the science of 
sciences, is merely the profitable process of 
milking the animal that never gives milk into 
the pail that has no bottom ! True philo- 
sophy, says one of the ablest of modern metu- 

G 



122 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 2. 

physicians, is still Plato, truly understood and 
false philosophy is still Plato misunderstood. 1 
The game of words is still as lively as ever, 
and truth and certainty as far off as ever. 

The convention and agreement of the whole 
world, however, is that words in ordinary 
speaking and writing, shall mean things ex- 
ternal to the mind ; but the conclusion and 
conviction of all those intelligent philosophers 
from Plato downwards, with whom I agree, 
is that words do not and cannot mean things 
external to the mind, but things in the mind; 
and this, whether the words are to be classed 
with the words animal or tree, having, as we 
believe, external phenomena to represent ; or 
are to be classed with the words thought and 
memory, representing no external phenomena 
whatever, and having no external image to 
represent that we know of, or believe to exist 
anywhere, unless we accept Plato's theory of 
thoughts in the Divine mind. But the con- 
clusion is self-evident to any one who thinks, 
that so long as man's mind is clothed with a 

1 Archer Butler. 



C. v., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 123 

body such as you and I have, my mind can 
never enter into, or be compared with your 
mind, and your mind can never into or be 
compared with my mind, and that we can 
only compare the sounds, signs, symbols, 
the words we mutually adopt and use to em- 
body our respective minds or thoughts, and 
that this old, original, and continuing conven- 
tion of mankind, as to language, is, therefore, 
false in fact. But we say also, that no truth 
has ever yet been arrived at until the old con- 
vention has been clearly abandoned, and some 
new verbal convention made and agreed to. 

If an arithmetician were asked what number 
is meant by the symbol 101, he would answer, 
I cannot tell till I know the basis of the 
system. It may mean 5, on the binary sys- 
tem ; or one hundred and one on the decimal 
system ; or one hundred and forty-five, on 
the duodecimal ; or many other numbers on 
other systems ; and he would laugh at the 
man setting to work to convince him that it 
mast mean one hundred and one, or any par- 
ticular number ! But the basis of an arith- 
metical system is merely the new original 

G 2 



124 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v., §3. 

convention or agreement on which the lan- 
guage of arithmetic, the arithmetical signs or 
symbols are to be understood, the units in all 
cases being conceived to be simple, or, as we 
have said, made so. Numbers being the sim- 
plest and most perfect general terms in lan- 
guage, have become the measure or make-sure 
of all other strictly scientific or accurate words. 
And no things whatever can be found to fall 
into the domain of strict and pure science 
until they are reduced to, and measured by 
numbers, which themselves are the just mea- 
sures of spaces and times, and all other 
things by which we measure. 

(3.) TJie Certainty of Numbers from the 
Senses. — Now, it is well worthy of observation, 
that Numbers are given to us by all our five 
senses. We can distinguish three distinct 
tastes, or three distinct smells, or three dis- 
tinct sounds, as well as touches or sights ; so 
that as long as any one sense remains, the 
human mind could form numbers from the 
senses, by considering sensations distinct and 
equal. All knowledge must begin with sen- 
sation. '• He that has no sensation/' said 



C. v., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 125 

Aristotle, long ago, " can neither learn nor 
know anything." But as we have already so 
often said, Numbers, or their truth or cer- 
tainty, cannot be founded without self-con- 
tradiction on any induction from numbers of 
instances ; for induction already supposes 
numbers in the mind. The certainty of num- 
bers, like all other human certainties, is from 
deduction only, depending on the certainty 
of the original assumption, the truth and 
equality of the units assumed. In the case of 
numbers the certainty depends on our own 
making and assuming our units perfectly 
equal. Their truth and certainty is the truth 
and certainty of human existence and of the 
human capacity to speak. Units are equal 
signs, because they are made equal by us not 
to our minds only, but to our senses, as many as 
we can apply to them. Numbering, of course, 
includes an act of the mind, because mind is 
& factor in all knowledge, and we recognise 
numbers and their relations as knowledge, 
and use them as the measures of everything. 
But we draw no conclusion by induction, but 
make our numbers by deduction one by one, 



126 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§4. 

and show others how to do so. Each number 
being, ab origine, wholly distinct, and clearly 
separated from every other, and strictly de- 
duced from the preceding ones. 

(4.) Number, Space, and Time.— As general 
terms or universals have been the battle-field 
of philosophy and logic in all ages, so the 
things called Number, Time, and SPACE, have 
generally been amongst the chief windmills 
which each philosophic hero in turn pro- 
ceeded to encounter with his lance of verbal 
logic. Mr. Mill, for aught I know, is the 
first philosopher who denied their existence 
altogether. Numbers in the abstract he 
thinks are nothing, and infinite Space a mere 
superstition ! but I am not aware whether he 
has clearly expressed his opinion to his coun- 
trymen about time and immortality ; whether 
they are anything, or nothing but the bug- 
bears of priests to frighten women and chil- 
dren, or merely the phantasms with which 
Christian philosophers confuse their brains. 

It is quite as rational, in my opinion, to 
deny one's own existence as to say that the 
numbers, the words which we ourselves make 



C. v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 127 

as names for units, which we ourselves also 
make equal and alike with our mouths, or our 
pens, are nothings ! The certainty and truth 
of Numbers depends on the certainty and truth 
of our own existence, and our ability to give 
like names, and make like marks. From the 
first existence we assumed — viz., knowledge — 
we have deduced them strictly and without any 
induction. Their truth and certainty depend 
on deduction from our first assumption, and not 
on any induction whatever. The certainty and 
truth of the things called Time and Space is 
precisely the same, for they also, we think, 
may be strictly deduced from our first 
assumption. 

It is easier, and indeed, more rational to 
deny the existence and reality of the external 
world without us, than to deny the existence 
and reality of that internal world which each 
of us feels and investigates for himself. Dog- 
matic idealism is, if possible, more rational 
than modern concrete materialism, though 
both are logically self-contradictory to the 
human mind. 

(5.) Time deducible from our first assump* 



128 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. 

tion. — As Numbers were deduced by merely 
adding like sign to like sign, and giving them 
names for ever, or as long as we please, or till 
we are tired; so that in fact Numbers fall into 
our third category as words or verbal things, 
synthetically built up and manufactured ; 
so, we say, Times are mental things, made 
alike by the phenomena being recognised by 
our minds, and enumerated by numbers. In 
Time we add like thought to like thought, 
and number them ; and so we can go on, as 
long as we please, to have and produce the 
sense of Time, by using numbers to measure, 
make-sure, or v record our Times, or like 
thoughts. 

Let us consider this a little carefully. As 
Numbers are bundles of ones, so Times are 
bundles of seconds ; one two ; one two ; or 
the tick tack; tick tack of the pendulum. 
We number the thoughts which like things 
cause in the mind. The recurrence and num- 
bering of like days and like nights, the 
recurrence and numbering of like solar ap- 
pearances, the recurrence or numbering of any 
like thoughts; that combination produces our 



C.v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 129 

sense of Time. However the thoughts are 
produced in the mind, if they are alike, we 
remember the former one, and with the 
second, the thought of time is produced. In 
short, as we obtained and deduced our num- 
bers from like words, so we obtain and deduce 
our times from like minds. The recurrence 
or numbering of like mental states, the repe- 
tition or numbering of like mental pheno- 
mena, in short, the enumeration of like minds, 
thoughts, ideas, perceptions, or mental states 
produces the sense of Time in every man's 
mind. 

Here we cannot appeal to our external 
senses for the likeness of the units of Time, 
for the unit of Time is a mental existence; but 
we appeal to each man's internal sense 
whether it is not the positive undeniable fact, 
that like mental phenomena produce in him 
the sense of Time. Therefore we say that 
we deduce Time from like minds, and make 
sure of, or measure our Time, by means of our 
first deduction, viz., Numbers, or like units. 

The 4th Proposition of Euclid, to use an ex- 
ample by way of analogy, is an appeal to every 

g 5 



130 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v„§5. 

man's geometrical sense ; that if two pairs of 
equal straight lines make equal angles, they 
may be superimposed so as to coincide alto- 
gether ; and the ends of the bases of the two 
triangles coinciding, then by the postulate or 
axiom that two right lines cannot enclose a 
space, we conclude that the two triangles are 
altogether equal. 

Much dispute, no doubt, for nearly 2,000 
years, has been wasted on this fundamental 
proposition by puzzled headed logicians and 
philosophers, as to whether the reasoning is 
legitimate and lawful. But there it stands, 
and it satisfies every man who has any geo- 
metrical sense, and understands the definitions 
and axioms. Never, in the course of my ex- 
perience, did I hear or see a boy try by in- 
duction from a number of instances whether 
it was true in some cases and not in others ; 
but I have seen many boys who had no geome- 
trical sense whatever, and could not by any 
means be brought to see any geometrical de- 
duction whatever. So one finds boys and men 
who never get to understand the extension 
and comprehension of a term in logic, or how 



C.v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 131 

they vary inversely, or the logical force of 
the clearest syllogism. But the world is not 
to stand still for dullards, nor can we possibly 
admit Mr. Herbert Spencer's abominable non 
sequitur, that of an intuition, from the crooked 
asses' bridge before him, to all the straight 
asses' bridges that ever were, or can be, 
thought of. We were taught how to think 
geometrically, and how to get over the 
asses' bridge without any figure whatever, and 
without having any kind of definite or per- 
ceptible figure in the mind. I don't call, and 
refuse to call this, a habit, for the same reason 
that I don't call Seeing a habit. It is a sense, 
a Divine gift ; an original power and faculty. 
It is a fact, no doubt, that many men, intelli- 
gent and even able on other subjects, have no 
geometrical sense, just as some men have no 
sense of Sight. Such unfortunates never saw 
the force and beauty of geometrical reason- 
ing, or possibly of the syllogistic reasoning 
to which Euclid reduced it. But we can no 
more reason with such men about the force of 
geometrical reasoning, than we can reason 
with a blind man about colours. 



132 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. 

But precisely as the 4th Proposition of 
Euclid makes an appeal to the geometrical ' 
sense of mankind; so do I appeal to the 
general human sense of Time. What is Time 
in the mind ? Think ! Have you any sense of 
time when the mind is thoroughly busy and 
occupied ? No ! Time has past unseen and 
unfelt. But if we look up and see the old 
familiar scene, a stroke of Time has struck, 
and we look at our watch. Whenever the 
same, that is, a second like state of mind 
occurs, or is forced on us, that is Time, and 
realizes or produces our sense of Time. 

To my mind, Time seems the negative of 
perfect mind. It is the obstruction to 
thought by the familiar sound, or sight, or 
other material interference with pure thought, 
which, as it were, compels the mind, enclosed 
in a body, to take in once more the old 
familiar state or thought, and so to feel a 
second of Time. 

However, it has forced itself clearly on my 
mind ; and I trust will force itself also on the 
mind of the reader ; that the only true view 
of Time is as the negative of perfect mind, and 



C.v.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 133 

that times are simply enumerated like states of 
mind produced by like phenomena, causing a 
repetition, or enumeration of old familiar 
thoughts in the human mind. There are two 
acknowledged facts that strongly support this 
conclusion : 1st. How short and imperceptibly 
time passes to the mentally active ; 2nd. How 
long time is to the man of one idea ; the same 
thought constantly recurring, and forcing the 
mind to repeat itself, and remember the one 
thing, and so number many like thoughts, for 
example, grief, sickness, remorse, fear. God 
deliver us from an eternity of remorse ! Times 
wasted, followed by Times remembered. It is 
unscientific and dangerous to truth, to assume 
anything you can trace higher ; and cer- 
tainly, when Kant assumed that Time was not 
thought, but a necessary form, or something 
inexplicable, necessary to thought ; when he 
said, " Time is given cl priori" it is not satis- 
factory to my mind, and he himself is un- 
certain ; as, in one passage, he seems to make 
number generate time, and in another, time 
generate number. 1 It seems, however, to my 

1 Ante note p. 45. Mr. Mansel, whose study of pure 



134 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. 

mind, very clear, that Time is thought ; it is 
thoughts enumerated, and as Numbers are 
bundles of like words, so Times are bundles 
of like minds, i.e., like states of mind or 
thoughts numbered. And I submit this fact 
to the sense of Time, of the thoughtful and 
candid reader; and whether I have not strictly- 
deduced Time from my original assumption, 



mathematics does not seem to have been of the very deepest, 
says, " Pure arithmetic contains no demonstration." And 
again, " Arithmetic is related to Time as Geometry to 
Space." And again, "To construct the science of arith- 
metic, in all its essential features, it is only necessary that 
we should be conscious of a succession in Time, and should 
be able to give names to the several members of the series." 
— Metaph., p. 256 — 258. To my mind, it might just as 
reasonably be said, that arithmetic is related to Virtue, as to 
Time. We number Virtues, and we number Times ; but 
we never time numbers. So we number spaces, but we 
never space, or attribute space to numbers. What can be 
meant by saying " Pure arithmetic contains no demon- 
stration " passes all comprehension, for it is all unan- 
swerable demonstration from first to last; demonstration 
to the senses and to the understanding. Possibly Mr. 
Mansel only learnt his multiplication table, and found there 
that 3 times 4 are 12, and never was shown any demon- 
stration of that fact, or that multiplication is only a short 
way of doing addition or numeration ; and the Times in the 
multiplication table have, by association of name, got con- 
founded in his mind with the sense of Time ; or he may 
think he is carrying out Kant's notion of Time generating 
Number, whatever that may mean. v 



C.v.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 135 

and lawfully and unanswerably included it, in 
my category of Mental things. 

(6.) Space Dedncible from the First As- 
sumption. — Whatever doubt the reader may 
have about my deduction of Time from num- 
bers of like thoughts, I really think he can have 
very little doubt but that every man's thought 
of Space is gained from number and time and 
the negative of body. It seems to me a most 
gratuitous and unfounded assumption to say 
with Kant, that Space is a form, or original 
something, we know not what, necessary to 
enable us to think of body or anything else. 
Put three bodies touching, and then — i.e., in 
time — take the middle one away, and every 
man would say, that is the space the body 
occupied. We first think Body, but our unit 
of Space is mentally deduced from it after- 
wards by number and time. 

The absence of body and its possible or 
actual return. — The emptiness left at any time 
between two bodies — that is, a unit of Space ; 
but deduced from several bodies, going and 
returning — i.e., being or not being numbered 
in Time. Thus we have our units of Space, 



136 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§7. 

or spaces, as bundles of like negative bodies, 
or the same body, absent in time, and its 
returns capable of being numbered. 

(7.) The Infinity of Number, Space, and 
Time. — Hence, I think, Number, Time, and 
Space may be strictly deduced from our first 
conception of knowledge, as the product of 
minds, bodies, and words. True and accurate 
Science must ever be formed by assuming the 
least possible number of original conceptions, 
as the foundation of our reasoning, and thence 
deducing as strictly as possible, by unan- 
swerable reasons, the more complicated and 
recondite conceptions consistent with fact. 

The admission of the first existence as- 
sumed, viz., knowledge, gave us three ex- 
istences — mind, body, word. The assumption 
of the acknowledged human power, to make 
like sounds or like marks, equal units, gave us 
from these three, all numbers to infinity — i.e., 
without possible reason to stop, without end, 
or, as we say, Infinite Number. Numbers of 
like minds, like states of mind, gave us Time ; 
and, of necessity, the infinity of Number 
became applicable to our numbered times, 



C.v.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 137 

and gave us thence Infinite Time, which is 
only the Infinite Number of days, or seasons, 
or years, or limited times. Lastly, Body and 
Number, and Time for absence and return, 
gave us limited space, as the negative of 
limited body, numbered once in time and 
gone to return or not, as time may show ; but 
having got one limited space and Number, 
Infinite Space is only the infinity of Numbers 
applied to limited space. 

We thus have attempted, with what success, 
the candid and philosophic reader must judge, 
to deduce Number, Time, and Space — the three 
great measures of all external things known to 
man — from our first conception or assumption 
of Knowledge, as some single unknown Ex- 
istence granted and admitted by the reader. 
We have already observed that pure geo- 
metrical conceptions are deducible from the 
undeniable fact of the impenetrability of 
Body or matter giving to our reason a Surface 
which we can touch, but whose thickness 
is beyond our senses — i.e., nothing that we 
can measure; and having obtained a geome- 
trical surface, we get lines without breadth, 



138 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v., §8. 

as its limits, and points, without dimensions, 
as the limits of lines, all of which are necessary 
deductions from Body and Space. 

The most abstract conception of all Know- 
ledge, that I can form, is as the product of 
Mind upon all mental things, bodily things, 
and verbal things, expressed in words and 
registered in the Mind itself by numbers, 
times, and spaces. 

(8.) The Certainty of Deduction and Scep- 
ticism. — I submit that this deduction of 
Number, Space, and Time is a strict de- 
duction, by reasons which no man can contro- 
vert, founded on the first admission or assump- 
tion. It is strict demonstration to the mind, 
how our knowledge of minds, bodies, and 
words, not only may be, but must be, synthe- 
tically built up and accumulated step by step, 
if we desire to be accurate. Each of these 
steps, as well as the first assumption, no 
rational being can deny, without self-contra- 
diction. It seems to me much more rational, 
and I hope I have made it more satisfactory 
to the reader, to proceed thus step by step, 
than to assume such deep ideas as Number, 



C.v., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 39 

Space, and Time, a priori, as somethings, 
one does not know what, forms of thought ; 
things necessary to enable us to think at all ; 
or, still worse, as Kant proposed, to assume 
Time and Space, as fundamental ideas, " ne- 
cessary forms of experience ; " and to neglect 
Number, the very origin of all human truth 
and certainty, and of all our truest thoughts 
of the illimitable Infinite. Such Assump- 
tions, lying at the foundation of all thought, 
or alleged by a great philosopher to do so, 
enables any sceptical philosopher to blow the 
whole fabric to pieces, by denying the 
assumptions with more or less probability; 
and then, confusing all thoughts by calling 
Number and Space non-entities, the Sceptic 
ends by denying the accuracy of the foun- 
dation of the plainest and clearest truths that 
man has built up, from the days of Pythagoras 
and Plato to those of Newton and La Place. 
The denial creates doubt, and confusion, and 
difficulty in weaker minds. Even though the 
sceptic himself should be self-compelled to 
exhibit his own absurdity, and to substitute 
the magnificent inductions ; that night is the 



1 40 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 9. 

true cause of day, unless it be that day is the 
true cause of night ; in short, that " the evi- 
dence of the scientific is built upon the unsci- 
entific," and that the Cause of all things is 
" the uniform sequence of events," from which 
it is undistinguishable ; that Law and Cause 
are one and the same, and the Universe a 
concourse of atoms, acting and reacting on 
each other, caused by nothing ! that the First 
Great Cause has retired, and delivered over 
his handiwork to a " great plurality of 
causes," or to " no cause at all !" 

(9.) The Conclusion. — Thus we say that 
numbers are only accurate words — the first, 
the simplest, and the most accurate that man 
possesses. So far as man is able to count, 
that is, to make numbers, he can never mis- 
take one number for another. A man who 
can count to 20, can never mistake 1 9 for 20. 
But if he can only count to 3, then he can 
never mistake 1 for 3, or 2 for 1. So if he 
can count to 100, or a million, or a nonillion, 
or chooses to give names to any higher num- 
ber, he can never mistake or confound one 
number for another. If he does, we say, he 



C.v.,§9.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 141 

has forgotten how to count, and other men 
have no difficulty in setting him right. Num- 
bers, therefore, are true and certain words 
and symbols, made true and certain by man's 
own manufacture demonstrated to eye and 
ear. Man ought to be master of his own 
words at least. " What hast thou that thou 
didst not receive?" said St. Paul. If it be 
not our own use of our own mother tongue, 
I cannot answer the question. But, for my 
part, I see nothing very absurd in supposing 
that even this usage may have been received 
from another Spirit. Evil communication 
corrupts good manners of speech, as well as 
all other good manners. 

However, numbers are the measures or make 
sures of both space and time. But Number, 
Space, and Time, may be considered as great 
Units ; and then are considered as infinite 
number, infinite space, and infinite time, be- 
cause, as we find our numbers can never end, 
and that we can apply numbers, or are forced 
to recognise numbers in measuring limited 
times and spaces, and as strictly applicable to 
space and time, we carry the infinity or never 



142 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§9. 

endingness of numbers to both of them. We 
thus reach the conception of Three infinite 
never-ending Units — Number, Space, and 
Time. Number is infinite words, Time is 
infinite thoughts, Space is the mental con- 
clusion from infinite bodies. Thus are the 
three deep conceptions of Number, Time, and 
Space, included in our three classes or cate- 
gories of rainds, bodies, and words. 

Ever since man first tasted that fatal tree 
of Knowledge, no man can, without contra- 
dicting himself, deny the existence of some 
knowledge. The admission of some know- 
ledge necessarily implies Minds, Bodies, and 
Words. One, two, three, gives us Number to 
infinity. The negative of perfect Mind is 
Time; the negative of Infinite Body is Space. 
The Infinity of both the last, is the same as 
the Infinity of numbers. The man who denies 
infinite Time or infinite Space must deny infi- 
nite Number, must deny his own words, must 
deny his own body, or must deny his own mind, 
must deny our first postulate, that knowledge 
exists, must deny the one Great God of Truth 



C.v.,§10.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 143 

frotn whom all truth is derived. To his own 
master he standeth or falleth.* 

(10.) Kant's Forms of Thought. — Kant's 
notion that Space and Time must be assumed, 
as given & priori, and are the necessary 
forms of all pure cognition, is therefore evi- 
dently erroneous, for the one sufficient reason 
that he forgot Number. What is a number, if 
not a word deduced as I have described ? At 
all events, a number occupies neither Space 
nor Time. We think a number quite inde- 
pendently of both space and time. It is first, 
and independent of both. In what place 
does the number three exist, or in what time? 
We apply number to spaces and times, but 
not Space or Time to Number. Three is a 
thought in your mind, and my mind, and in 
every intelligent mind that ever did or can 
exist; but it occupies no space, it endures 

1 Mr. Bain, in his able work on the " Senses and Intellect," 
has justly remarked that " Space might be conceived in the 
absence of an external world from the body's own move- 
ment in empty space, from the muscular movement." Man's 
own body is positive, and space is the negative, and is 
rendered positive by occupation of it by body. This seems 
our simplest thought of space, viz., thoughts of numbered 
movements of our own bodies. 



1 44 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., §10. 

through no time. It is eternal and nedfes- 
sary; and so of every other number — it can 
never change. The meaning of the word 
three, and of every other number, is a cogni- 
tion, and utterly independent of both Space 
and Time — a cognition never-ceasing, un- 
changeable, eternal. If it even be said that 
the human mind cannot conceive three until 
it has spent Time in counting it, or learning 
it from three bodies, or fingers, or spaces in 
external nature, that may show the defect, 
or imperfection, or infancy of the human 
mind, or even that the human mind itself 
exists in Space and Time, but surely does 
not affect the meaning, thought, or pure cog- 
nition of the number three. Kant himself, as 
we have observed, is dubious between number 
and time. Dr. Whewell is also dubious. He 
seems to derive Number from Time by the idea 
of succession, but admits that some may ap- 
prehend Number by a direct act of intuition. 1 
But succession is number in Time. He sug crests 
that " Space, Time, Number, Cause, and the rest, 

1 " Hist. Scien. Ideas," bk. ii., ch. ix., vol. L, p. 143. 



C. v., § 10.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 145 

may be termed different forms of the impulse 
of the mind to generalize!" 1 This, of course, 
is multiplying assumptions d priori, and not 
reasoning from them, and worsens the defect 
of his master Kant. However, I claim Dr. 
Whewell to be on my side ; or rather, I wish 
to say, with sincere humility, that I claim to 
be on his side when he is right. In his "Nov. 
Org. Renov.," 2 he says, " To count a num- 
ber, is from the first opening of man's mental 
faculties an operation which no science can 
render more precise. The relations of Space 
are nearest to those of Number, in obvious 
and universal evidence." — " The idea of resem- 
blance may be noticed as coming next to Space 
and Number in original precision." — " Then 
Cause, vague and general." — u But the other 
ideas on which science depends, are not un- 
folded till a much later period of intellectual 
progress." Also, at p. 171, he seems to 
admit that the true course of scientific ideas 
begins with Number. He is writing history, 
but I am deducing thought ; and Science has 

1 "Hist. Scien. Ideas," bk. ii., ch. ix., vol. i., p. 146, n. 

2 Page 62. 

H 



146 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v.,§10. 

grown by fits and starts irregularly. It is 
man's business to reduce his thoughts to order. 
Other metaphysicians improve on the defects 
of these great examples, by multiplying such 
defects more and more, assuming as many 
intuitions as there are thoughts which they 
like as principles ; and think their ipse dixit 
of an intuition a sufficient reason for its 
being granted as a fundamental principle of 
the human mind. 1 At last comes Mr. Spencer, 
who arrives at the climax of absurdity, by 
insisting on an intuition for every problem 
of Euclid, by which intuition he jumps to a 
conclusion, from the crooked figure he makes 
on the paper before him, to all the straight 
figures which ever did or can exist ! A species 
of seqidtur, which, no doubt, induced Newton 
to write in his Euclid, u Hie Liber aut nullns 
decies repetitus amatur" whence, by an in- 
tuition, quite as well founded, I might con- 
clude, Homo est bipes implumis — i.e., "an 
unfathered biped," as a Scotchman might pro- 
nounce it, and created by a concourse of 
atoms ! 

1 Dr. Mc Cosh on Intuitions. 



C.v.,§ll.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 147 

(11.) The Trinity of the Human Mind. — 
Our first standpoint was the deduction of a 
Threefold in our first Cognition, which we 
proved that nobody could refuse to admit. We 
have now reached another remarkable position. 
We have arrived by deduction, d, priori, from 
our original assumption of some knowledge 
as an existing thing, at Number, Space, and 
Time — the three great measures of all bodily 
existences under the sun. Having reached this 
very remarkable standpoint, we submit that we 
have reached our first stage in the true philo- 
sophy of minds, bodies, and words. Plain 
reason confutes the errors of scepticism, and 
establishes that logical Trinity, which has 
been dimly seen by some of the greatest and 
most thoughtful metaphysical reasoners, that 
the world has produced, from Plato to Newton, 
both included. 

This, Trinal symmetry in Unity, is the fun- 
damental law of the human Mind, the dimmed 
image of its Maker. Man cannot reason cor- 
rectly without confessing in words, logically, 
the greatest of all revealed truths. The human 
mind is also one, but it also has three com- 

II 2 



148 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§ll. 

ponent factors, which all metaphysicians, more 
or less, have dimly perceived — Emotion, In- 
tellect, Will ; or Passions, Faculties, Senti- 
ments ; or the Sense, the Understanding, and 
the Reason — that higher Reason which domi- 
nates, directs, and purifies. The admission of 
one Existence does, of necessity, according to 
the constitution of man's mind, necessarily ad- 
mit and pre-suppose three original existences ; 
three Beings, not the parts, but the Factors, the 
Persons, the component Units in that Divine 
Unity. The very first step in knowledge, the 
very first cognition that man can possibly 
make, does logically confess this great truth, 
of three units, factors in unity — -the truth, 
which was, in the fulness of time, to be re- 
vealed in all its moral significance in the 
writings of humble and ignorant Jewish 
Peasants. 

Thus is the Moral Majesty and Wisdom 
of God vindicated, by confuting the hesita- 
ting wisdom of the world by the simplicity 
of the humble ; by directing their words, not 
to the intellectual, but to the moral, to truths 
higher than the intellect; enlarging, and 



C.v.,§12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 149 

extending, and raising, and purifying the 
thoughts of philosophers, by the moral 
thoughts revealed to the ignorant, and re- 
vealed in words, without the form of the 
logician, or the worldly skill of human sci- 
ence, but confirmed by man's highest Reason. 
" I thank thee, Heavenly Father, Lord of 
heaven and earth," said the man Jesus, re- 
joicing in Spirit, " that thou hast hid these 
things from the wise and prudent and revealed 
them unto babes ; even so, Father, for so it 
seemed good in thy sight." 

This is true Revelation, where the highest 
moral truths are not discovered by philoso- 
phers, but are proclaimed openly and plainly 
as God's truth, by the peasant, not in the 
words of man's wisdom, but so that the 
most wise and the most ignorant of human 
kind can equally hear or read, and morally 
understand, and therewith enlarge, elevate, 
and improve their emotions, intellect, and will. 

(12.) The Scientific Expressions Esta- 
blished. — The conclusions we have deduced 
from our first assumption, that knowledge 
exists, are these — The thought of the Self- 



150 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. 

Knowledge of the First Existence is to man, 
necessarily, a Trinity in Unity, and a Unity 
in Trinity. Which is a logical confession of 
man's humility and ignorance of the consti- 
tution of the Godhead, save as a Threefold 
Unity. 

Human Knowledge = Mind into Thing, 
into Word = the product of Minds, Bodies, 
and Words. 

All things known to man consist of 

Mental , Bodily , Verbal 

Things • Things » Things. 

A number is a named sum of simple units ; 

A general word or Universal is a named pro- 
duct of compound units. 

Infinite Number is Unity into Infinity, or the 
product of one and infinity, or never-ending- 
ness. 

Infinite Time is Number into Mind, or the 
product of thoughts and infinite number. 

And Infinite Space is Number into Body, into 
Time, or the product of infinite Numbers 
of Bodies in Time. 

These three great infinite abstract words or 



C.v., §12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 151 

thoughts are strictly formed according to the 
rule in the last chapter — viz., as the products 
of the likenesses of the individual units of the 
class. Thus the likenesses which each number 
has to other numbers are the units it is com- 
posed of, and the power to go on and take an- 
other and another step that is never-endingness 
or infinity. Therefore, the Great Abstract 
Term, Number, is the product of unity and 
infinity. So the likeness which each unit of 
Time has to another time, is numbers or suc- 
cessions of like minds, thoughts, or states of 
mind. Therefore, by our rule, in the last 
chapter, the Great Abstract, Time, is the 
product of the two factors, Number and 
Mind or thoughts. 

So the likeness which each unit of space 
has to every other unit of space, is the suc- 
cessive possibility of a body in time filling it. 
That successive possibility of interaction, be- 
tween Body, and Time, removing and restoring 
it, is our conception of the unit of Space; 
and, therefore, by our rule in the last chapter, 
the Great Abstract Word, Space, is the pro- 



5 2 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. 

duct of the three factors — Number, and Time, 
and Body, i.e., — 

Space = Number x Time x Body. 

But in this product body is negative. It 
is absence in time between numbers of other 
bodies, that produces our idea of Space. So 
I think the repetition of like thoughts, or 
Time is the negative of perfect Mind, and 
therefore, Time and Space are both originally 
negatives, but not therefore non-entities. 

Now, if we substitute in the above equa- 
tion for Space, the value of Time, already 
established, we should have Infinite Number 
twice over, or numbers upon numbers, and 
Mind and Body; and we thus arrive at an 
expression for infinite Space, as being equi- 
valent to infinite numbers upon numbers of 
minds and bodies ! We arrive, in fact, by 
deduction, at the solemn feeling and the 
sublime expression, which a Christian philo- 
sopher might find rising to his lips, on 
some starry night, when, gazing from his 
observatory, in the midst of some great 
centre of human life, and looking upwards 



C. v., § 12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 153 

to the infinite numbers of starry bodies, in 
the Space above his head, and downwards to 
the infinite numbers of minds like his own 
on the Earth at his feet ; and then dreams, 
like a child, of the power, and wisdom, and 
goodness, and the revealed purpose of his 
Creator, to people a universe of worlds with 
an infinity of never-dying, intelligent, and 
moral beings ! 

If such a philosopher, engaged in such 
contemplation, has had the sublime happiness 
to learn humility at the feet of Jesus, and has 
learnt to struggle, by the grace of God, suc- 
cessfully to some extent, to keep down that 
infernal pride which prevents man from hum- 
bling himself even to his Creator, he may pos 
sibly call to mind that first occasion on which, 
in plain and unmistakable words, a wayworn 
Jewish peasant, " wearied with his journey," 
sat by a well-side, and said to a guilty woman, 
" I that speak unto thee am He !" the Messiah ; 
" God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him 
must worship Him in spirit and in truth ! The 
Father seeketh such to worship Him ! " Will 
not such a philosopher, I ask, as he looks down 

H 5 



154 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. 

in contemplation on the millions upon millions 
of ignorant, and thoughtless, and guilty men 
and women on the earth below him, and up- 
wards to the many mansions in His Father's 
House, exclaim also, in the words of his Lord 
and Saviour on the same occasion, " Truly, 
the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are 
few ; pray, therefore, the Lord of the Harvest 
that he would send forth labourers into His 
Harvest !" 



C. vi., ■§ 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 5 5 



CHAPTER VI. 

SCIENTIFIC TRUTH AND CERTAINTY. 

(1.) Scientific Certainty Numerical. — 
Let us consider what is meant by Scientific 
Truth and Certainty. We have demonstrated 
that every abstract word or general name is a 
number, the product of two or more factors, 
until we come to an indecomposable word, a 
verbal unit ; each factor of a compound word 
being itself the abstract word or general name 
for one of the likenesses in any unit of the class. 
The word plane-triangle, which means all the 
plane triangles that ever did or can exist, is, for 
example, the product of the thoughts or words, 
Plane-figure x three right lines. The most 
material and most certain part of this defini- 
tion is the number three, the numerical likenes 



156 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §1. 

which all triangles have to one another. Once 
we can apply a pure arithmetical number to the 
unit of any class as a likeness of all the units of 
the class, we at once have a definite class ; for 
a pure arithmetical number can never be con- 
founded with any other. We can never con- 
found a plane triangle with any other figure. 
Our senses may fail us, of course, in deter- 
mining whether any external individual falls 
within the class in seeing or touching the 
number of sides or angles, or knowing whether 
the sides are straight, &c, and so leave us 
doubtful, after full examination, whether the 
external unit belongs to the internal class or 
not; but the mind never can confound one 
arithmetical number with another. The con- 
crete application, the value and utility of our 
abstract conceptions may depend on our being 
able to count and measure external things, 
but the pure truth of our reasoning is quite 
independent of all external things whatever. 
Once, for example, that we have got the 
word isoceles triangle, meaning, having two 
equal sides, we can never mentally mistake a 



C vi., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 157 

unit of the internal mental class for anything 
else. This numerical certainty runs through 
all pure and mixed mathematics, and all 
mathematical names are thus rendered cer- 
tain, viz., by taking a unit of space, a unit of 
time, a unit of velocity, a unit of force, a 
unit of mass, and so on, thus introducing the 
certainty of arithmetical number into all 
mathematical reasoning; each new set or 
class of units, becoming themselves measures 
of some higher and more compound class, and 
carrying with them the certainty of arithme- 
tical numbers, with such amount of external 
certainty as the discovered unit of the new 
class may possess. 

It does not appear to me, that the vital 
importance of this accurate numerical mea- 
surement of the units of a scientific class is 
sufficiently appreciated by natural philoso- 
phers. The accurate measurements in number, 
space, and time, where applicable, and of 
mass, and force, and velocity w 7 here measur- 
able, are the only road to certainty of 
thoughts concerning external nature, which 
is fall of numerical marvels yet to be dis- 



158 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vl, § 1 . 

covered. 1 One plant or animal, the rela- 
tions of whose parts were accurately mea- 
sured and recorded numerically, might do 
more than years spent in loose comparisons 
and analogical arguments about qualities, 
likenesses, intensities, &c, &c. Number, 
space, and time are the three great measurers 
and certifiers of all natural external pheno- 
mena. No class can have any accurate scien- 
tific value till it is founded on number, space, 
and time, applied to the parts of the unit of 
the class. Types are useful, but numbers are 
true. Types are rule of thumb classification, 
but numerically measured parts are the only 
foundation of all true classification. 

Cuvier's discovery of the correlation of the 
parts of every organised being awaits the 
industrious measurements of all observers, in 
their own particular department of natural 
philosophy. The correlations are, without 
doubt, numerical and definite, if we only 
search deeply enough to find them. The very 

1 As, for example, in Phyllotaxis or leaf arrangement, in 
Botany, and numerical symmetry in Chemistry, Crystal- 
lography, Physiology, &c. The correlations to be truly 
scientific, must be numerical, and nature is full of them. 



C. vi., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 159 

hairs of man's head are numbered ; and, in my 
opinion, I think the time will come, when, 
from some obvious and self-evident pheno- 
menon, we maybe able to demonstrate in almost 
all cases, that the number of all the parts 
of an organism lie between the limits n and n\ 
When the laws of organised bodily structure 
have been studied with a true and accurate 
philosophical method, by numerical mensura- 
tion, I think this will be found to be the 
case. 

Extravagant as this may appear to philo- 
sophers who sit down contented with types, 
and degrees, and intensities, who still believe 
that there is some original and fundamental 
difference in nature, between what Locke 
called the primary and secondary qualities of 
matter, who do not see that the whole differ- 
ence lies in man's own dull perceptions, in his 
own dull bodily organization, which it is the 
business, and the pleasure, and the duty of 
his mind to remove farther and farther from 
age to age ; yet, surely, some of these philo- 
sophers ought to be shaken in their opinion, 
when they remember, that to many great 



160 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vl,§1. 

philosophers of old, motion and velocity, and 
many other scientific words or thoughts, were 
mysterious, and gradual, and intense; that 
before the days of Newton force also was 
spoken of as synonymous with the " virtue" 
and the " influence," and the " power" of the 
planets or other bodies, and admitted of 
intensity and degrees, in place of units and 
measures in number, and space, and time. 

The primary qualities of Matter, as Locke 
called them, viz., solidity, extension, figure, 
motion, or rest, are no more in the external 
bodies we see, than our minds are in the ex- 
ternal bodies we see ; instead of in our own 
bodies. They are merely loose and inaccurate 
thoughts, mental existences, or things ex- 
pressed by words, and can only become true 
and certain thoughts and scientific words, 
when, and so far as, they are measurable by 
number, time, and space. 

So the secondary qualities of Matter, 
colours, sounds, tastes, smells, &c, as has 
been more generally admitted, are just the 
same; mere words for thoughts in our 
minds, and nothing in the objects themselves 



C. vi., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 161 

that we can possibly know. Solidity and 
colour are both mere unknowable somethings, 
powers to produce effects upon our dull and 
imperfect bodily organization. When it is 
said, " we cannot measure secondary qualities 
in the same way in which we measure 
primary qualities by a mere addition of 
parts," 1 that is merely saying that we have 
not yet discovered how to measure them by 
number ; we have not yet got or discovered 
true and certain measurable units. We do 
not yet know what a double colour or a 
treble colour is, just as before the days of 
Newton we did not know w r hat a double force 
or a treble force was. 

There is here, as I submit, a want of faith 
in the human mind* Why should we not go 
on with our photometers, pyrometers, hygro- 
meters, making better and better u examples 
of the systematic reduction of sensible quali- 
ties to modes of numerical measurement," 2 
until some new Newton shall arise, who will 
tell us for certain what a double colour or a 

1 Whewell, " Hist. Scien. Ideas/' vol.i.,p. 332. 

2 Ibid, vol. L, p. 335. 



162 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., § 1. 

treble heat is, and how it must be thought of, 
just as the old Newton told us what a double 
or treble force is, and how Force must be 
thought of by all men of science? 

Why should there not be a succession of 
Newtons? men beginning with the fear of 
the Lord of Hosts, the God of Abraham, and 
Isaac, and Jacob, the One true and only God, 
men who may search with the simplicity of 
children and the energy of men, and may 
find means to bring the palsied minds of their 
fellow men further into the presence of the 
Divine Word ; who may take off the house top 
of human thoughts that hide the Truth from 
mankind ; and may be able in pure words to 
teach us new wonders from that ocean of truth, 
into which Newton has hitherto cast the most 
illustrious pebble? Newton himself disco- 
vered that the coloured spectrum of the Sun's 
rays can be reduced to the musical numerical 
scale, but the discovery has remained barren, 
and our harmony of colours has yet to be 
developed scientifically. 1 

1 Mr. Ruskin directs us to peep through a square hole in 
a bit of card in order to find the harmony of colour in 



C.vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 163 

(2.) Certainty by Space, Time, and Num- 
bers. Newton. — We say, however, that the 
truth and certainty of every scientific abstract 
thought depends on our finding some nume- 
rical measure for it, in space and time, i.e., 
some measurable unit, which can convert the 
imperfect verbal number into a perfect mental 
numerical number. 

The truth of this is, perhaps, best illus- 
trated by the dispute we have alluded 
to, the most illustrious that has occurred 
in the history of science. Before the time 
of Newton, the abstract word force was 
as vague and unsettled as any modern 
pseudo-scientific term can be. It was syno- 
nymous with power, and influence, and virtue, 
and was strong and intense, and admitted of 
degrees. Nobody knew, till Newton taught 
them, what to understand by a double force, 
or a treble force. The abstract term force 
had a meaning, but it was not numerical ox 

nature, and our walls are covered with speckled dabs called 
the Mediaeval School of Painting, fitted rather for savages 
than civilized men, and little attempt is made to search, 
with scientific precision, for the true laws of harmonious 
colouring. 



164 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§2. 

measured by space and time, and was there- 
fore not accurate, or true, or scientific. 

When Newton, by an act of mental vigour, 
which has made him the most illustrious man 
of science the world has ever seen, perceived 
how this vague abstract term was to be 
truly measured by number, and space, and 
time, his conclusion was disputed by a phi- 
losopher only second to himself. Leibnitz 
and Newton were, perhaps, the two greatest 
philosophers and ablest men of science that 
ever lived at the same time together upon 
this earth. To th§ one we owe the wonders 
of modern astronomy, and to the other, to a 
great extent, the clearness of the modern 
calculus. Newton possessed the clearest 
thoughts, and Leibnitz the clearest words. 

The question was, how is force to be com- 
pared scientifically with space. What relation 
exists between the forces which cause a body 
to move and the spaces through which the 
body does move. Both these great men 
thought that they were discussing a question 
of real existence, and not a mere question of 
words. Both agreed that the momentum or 



C. VI., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 65 

force of a moving body varied directly as its 
mass, and directly as its velocity, and Newton, 
whose thoughts were clearest, discovered and 
perceived, in his own mind, that a double 
velocity meant a double space in the same 
time, and said that force varied as the space ; 
but the Leibnitzians appealed to experiment, 
and measured the spaces which bullets urged 
by different forces would penetrate a bank of 
earth, and found the spaces vary as the square 
root of the velocity; and therefore insisted 
that force varied as the square of the space, 
and that they had proved it by experiment. 

If ever there could be a question con- 
cerning the truth of reality, or real things, 
this, at first sight, would appear to be such, 
and all the philosophers of Europe were 
divided, and warmly debated the question. 
It was clear fact, as some thought, opposed 
to Newton's clear thought or theory. La- 
grange, we believe, first suggested, that the 
dispute was only about words ! viz., What 
shall we call force or momentum ? But 
Words are things in science and philosophy, 
and Newton's thought was clear and true, 



166 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §2. 

and to us who have succeeded as it were 
to the rich inheritance of words prepared 
by Newton's thinking, it appears, and is, not 
only true but necessary. A clear-headed 
modern mathematician cannot conceive other- 
wise than as Newton thought ; he cannot 
conceive the contrary, or how a double or 
treble force could possibly be thought to 
send the same body in the same time through 
any other than a double or treble space ; and 
he at once distinguishes the Leibnitzian expe- 
riments into constantly diminishing forces. 
He pronounces Newton necessarily right, 
although no such single force, acting in space 
as Newton conceived, is known or proved to 
exist in external nature. 

Newton's thought of Force is clear, true, 
and necessary in the mind, and makes force 
a purely true scientific idea, or thought, or 
word, measurable by number, space, and 
time. It is the foundation thought or word 
of Newton's science; but such a force is not a 
real existence at all except as. thought is real 
in each man's mind, and words are real in each 
man's mouth. We can apply the thought to 



C. vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 167 

deduce and measure the movements of the 
heavenly bodies, and to predict future pheno- 
mena; and so, with Newton's aid, mathe- 
matical astronomers compel the assent of 
those less gifted minds which are practical 
and not ideal, just as we can apply numbers 
to make a calculation, or to do a sum, or 
geometry to measure the length of a distant 
line, and tell the practical man to go and 
count, or measure, in order to verify our 
calculated result, and so convince himself of 
the truth of our science. 

Newton's thought of simple force, therefore, 
when once clearly perceived in the mind, is as 
true and necessary as the thought of number, 
the thought of space, the thought of time ; 
we cannot think of single forces otherwise than 
as varying directly with the space through 
which they move a given body in a given time. 
We test the utility of the thought by applying 
it to predict future or previously unknown 
phenomena amongst the heavenly bodies. 
This seems the universal test of pure truth 
or really true thoughts, viz., the Divine Power 
to predict future or distant events. And so far 



1 68 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §2. 

as we are able to predict the future in 
external nature, so far only may we believe 
in the external truth of our internal thoughts. 
But the necessity is verbal necessity. 

When, for another example, Cuvier, exa- 
mining only the jawbone of the opossum 
of Montmartre, predicted, before the rest of 
the skeleton was extracted from the stony 
matrix, that it was that of a marsupial animal, 
and, in the presence of his scientific friends, 
proceeded to remove the matrix of stone unti\ 
all anatomists were satisfied of the truth of 
his prediction ; he gave a proof, to a limited 
extent, of the truth of his own wonderful 
thought or discovery, that every part of an 
organized body possesses some fixed correla- 
tion to every other part ; which relations, it 
is the business of the science of organized 
bodies, to discover, and map out, and to mea- 
sure, and reduce to number, space, and time. 
So far, therefore, as human science enables 
man to predict phenomena, it is true and 
certain ; i.e., worthy of our confident belief, 
and no further. This seems the only test of 
verbal truth in the sciences of external nature. 



C.vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 169 

When Leibnitz denied the truth of Newton's 
idea of force and its relation to space, the 
proper answer was this; by means of this 
word, by means of a primeval velocity sup- 
posed to be produced by a single tangential 
force acting on the planets, and of the force 
of gravity constantly acting by Newton's law, 
we can deduce, account for, and predict many 
new and before unpredicted phenomena in the 
motions of the planets ; our word is true. 

But we ought not to let our admiration of 
what Newton accomplished, lead us to sup- 
pose that any such thing really ever existed 
as a primeval tangential force, launching the 
planets into space with their enormous ob- 
served velocities, and in the tangents to their 
respective orbits. The supposition, or hypo- 
thesis, of such a primeval tangential force is 
a mere thought, to represent the known and 
observed existing phenomena of the tangential 
velocities of the planets. This hypothesis, of 
Force varying as the Space, probably at present 
obstructs the progress of knowledge, though 
it enabled Newton to prove the force of 
gravity as a law of nature amongst all the 

I 



170 PHILOSOPHY; OR, " [C.vi., §3. 

planetary bodies, and Herschel to extend it 
beyond the limits of our system. Wonderful 
as Newton's discovery of the law of gravity 
was, yet it accounts for only a small number 
of the motions and known phenomena of the 
planets. It offers no explanation of their 
relative velocities in space, or of their rela- 
tive weights and distances, or of their rota- 
tory velocities on their own axes. 

(3.) Gravity a mere JVord, not a Reality. 
— Though Newton himself thought and said 
that he was not feigning hypotheses, but rea- 
soning from and about external realities, yet 
it is as clear as noonday, that Gravity itself is 
a mere word, or thought, and the time may 
come when it shall be resolved into some other 
word, or thought, and man may become able 
to show how gravity itself can be made greater 
or less without altering the matter of which 
at present we think it is a property. Newton 
himself latterly guarded himself from being 
so interpreted, and said expressly, " I do not 
take gravity for an essential property of 
bodies," 1 and he suggested a medium varying 

1 Advertisement to second edition of " Optics." Can the 



C. vi., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 7 i 

in density, as a possible " cause of the gravity 
of the heavenly bodies to one another." 

We can already create or increase the 
attraction of a magnet, without altering the 
mass, by merely passing a current of electri- 
city in a particular manner through an en- 
veloping wire, and the time may come when 
we shall be able to increase or diminish the 
attraction of gravity itself, or show how it may 
be done, without altering the mass. But the 
truth we contend for, and which we submit 
we have proved, is that in all true science we 
merely invent or discover abstract thoughts 
in the mind, which more or less perfectly 
resemble external phenomena, and express 
them in words, which more or less perfectly 
explain external phenomena to our fellow 
men. The true and measured thought is 
embodied in a word, of which we can speak, 
but concerning the real things or ideas them- 
selves we cannot speak. 

We conceive the attraction of gravity, as 
discovered or invented by Newton, but it is a 

effect of electricity passing through a helix enveloping a 
magnet, be in any way connected with Heat or Gravity ? 

I 2 



172 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. 

mere thought or word by which we explain 
to the mind some of the apparent motions of 
the planets, and which word, Force of gra- 
vity, Newton first showed how to reduce to 
measurement by number, and space, and 
time, and so created, by deduction, the 
science of modern astronomy. Newton's own 
words for expressing his great thoughts have 
been superseded by the more effective and 
shorter words, which we owe chiefly to Leib- 
nitz, the words or signs of the modern cal- 
culus. Still, we ought not to suppose gravity 
a reality, which may not be superseded by 
some better theory or thought, which will 
explain, by one law, not only the central, but 
also the tangential and rotatory velocities, 
and the masses and distances of the planetary 
universe. 

It, no doubt, may sound strange to call 
the force of gravity a verbal truth, and to 
say that it is already become a mere idol, that 
obstructs the progress of knowledge ; but, 
for my part, I have very little doubt that it 
is at this moment rather a blind, hiding deeper 
truths behind it, than a truly useful hypo- 



C. vi., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 73 

thesis, to embody astronomical progress, or 
scientific facts. 

By talking of the force of gravity, and no- 
thing but gravity, astronomers have got to 
talk so much about the mechanism of the 
heavens, that they half believe they under- 
stand our whole planetary system, whilst 
they are wholly ignorant of the greatest 
number of the phenomena, and cannot give 
any explanation of the greater number of 
the most obvious facts. Not only are the 
laws of comets wholly unknown, but the most 
ordinary planetary phenomena are wholly un- 
explained. Why are the days of our Earth 
and Venus from twenty-three to twenty-four 
hours long, or nearly in proportion to their 
mass and size, but that of Jupiter, which is 
one thousand times larger, not half so long ? 
Not one of the axal revolutions of the planets 
can this law of gravity explain in any way. 
Why has the earth one moon, and Venus, 
within the earth's orbit, and, again, Mars, 
without the earth's orbit, neither of them any 
moon at all? Why has Jupiter, the largest 
of the planets, only four moons, and Saturn 



174 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. 

seven or eight, and Uranus more, some turned 
topsy-turvy, and going retrograde? Why 
do all secondaries turn nearly the same face 
to their primaries, i. e., turn on their axes in 
nearly the same time that they go round the 
planet, and yet the planets vary so much 
between their days, and years, and seasons ? 
Again, why does the moon take a month to 
go round the earth, and the moons of Jupiter 
and Saturn go round in a few hours ? The 
reasons for all the relative masses and dis- 
tances, and most of the motions of the planets, 
are wholly unknown ; and yet astronomers talk 
as if this law of gravity had taught us the 
whole mechanism of the heavens ! when it can 
explain neither the velocity of any one planet 
round the sun, not its own velocity on its own 
axis. 

What should we say of a man who saw the 
weights of the church clock, but could not 
explain how it was that one hand went faster 
than the other, if he proceeded to talk about 
his " knowledge of the mechanism of the 
clockwork," as our modern astronomers talk 
about their knowledge of the mechanism of 



C.vi.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 175 

the Heavens ? The simplicity and humility of 
Newton have been forgotten by La Place and 
his successors, for, speaking comparatively, 
with what hereafter may be known, we know 
indeed but little of the mechanism of the 
heavens. Why, therefore, should we talk as 
if we did ? 

Gravity, quite possibly, may be the fifth 
phenomenon of that wondrous pulsating fluid, 
of which light, heat, electricity, and mag- 
netism are probably divers vibrations, mea- 
surable by number, space, and time, and we 
possibly hereafter may be able to convert 
heat and light, and electricity an4 mag- 
netism, into gravity, just as we can now 
convert heat into light, and electricity and 
magnetism into each other, and into light. 
We can take the latent heat of any body, 
and make it visible as light; we can take 
light and extract the heat, or find it done 
for us ; we can take electric and magnetic 
currents, and exhibit them as light and heat, 
and convert magnetism into electricity, and 
electricity into magnetism ; when we can 
convert all and each of these four into gravity, 



176 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. 

or gravity into these four, we shall possibly 
have solved the problem of all the motions of 
our planetary system; and may be able to 
treat the eccentricity of a planet's orbit as 
a mere single vibration of that wondrous fluid 
called Light. Do not the tails of comets 
teach us that the attraction of gravity is 
a misnomer, and that gravity is sometimes 
levity, an immense vibration of that all- 
pervading fluid Medium ? Can that be called 
the attraction of gravity which sends forth 
by repulsion a tail of a comet six hundred 
millions of miles in a few days ? It is levity 
rather than gravity. It is the opposite of 
gravity. It is possibly the outward pulse or 
vibration, of which gravity is the inward 
pulse ; but it certainly is not attraction, but 
repulsion. Do let us cease to talk of the 
mechanism of the heavens until we know 
more of their mechanism ; and let us consider 
whether the hypothesis of gravity is not 
one that has done its work, and taught us 
central forces, and let us strive to under- 
stand circumferential and rotatory forces 
and repulsions, and not merely the central 



C. vi., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 77 

forces and attractions; or else, to combine 
them together into pulse and repulse, so as 
to account for the relative size, and velocities, 
and axal motions of the planets and their 
secondaries, and the phenomena of comets' 
tails. At least, let us be more humble, and ac- 
knowledge our ignorance, for we know the 
mechanism of the heavens much as the parish 
pauper who pumps the organ and sees the 
clock weights, knows the mechanism of the 
church clock. It was La Place who taught 
us that proud, empty phrase, " mechanism of 
the heavens." Newton was more humble. 
At all events, if man's body had been a vapour, 
and he had lived in Encke's comet, a physical 
body as large as the whole orbit of the moon, 
w r e might now have been speaking as freely 
of the sun's repulsion, as we do on earth of 
the sun's attraction, and we might have spoken 
perhaps of the vast annual vibration, which 
carried the latently hotter parts of our comet 
by attraction closer to the sun than Mercury, 
and repelled the latently colder parts into the 
distant regions beyond the orbits of Jupiter or 
Saturn. 

15 



178 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§4. 

Gravity, therefore, both on the authority of 
Newton himself, and according to the principle 
of this work, is a mere human thought or word, 
to express a bundle of appearances, and not 
anything really existing in external nature. 
It is not u an essential property of bodies," and 
the time is probably fast approaching when we 
shall have to give it up altogether. That time 
will probably be, as soon as we can bring the 
internal heat of the globe into measurable 
relations by means of number, space, and 
time, with the lengths of our day and year, 
and the law r s of heat, light, electricity, and 
magnetism. 

(4.) All Scientific Ideas Words not Reali- 
ties. — In short, we affirm, that if any man 
thinks that by the thoughts, words, or things 
called light, heat, gravity, electricity, or mag- 
netism, or by the words, chemical-affinity, 
polarity, definite-proportion, or substance, 
matter, cause, life, or mind, or any other scien- 
tific expressions, he has attained any kind of 
knowledge of the realities of the universe 
above him, or of the world around him ; he 
knows nothing yet as he ought to know it. 



C.vi.,§4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 179 

He stands like a man in a temple of light, 
dazzled and bewildered by the magnificence 
of the sight before him, but with his eyes shut, 
and mistaking the flashes of his own dazzled 
bewilderment for the light itself, which has 
confused and puzzled his senses. These words, 
and all other words of science, Dr. Whewell 
calls ideas. 

I do not object to the term idea, which 
the wisest men the world has seen from the 
days of Plato till now, have thought fit and 
proper to assist the human mind in its search 
after truth. But the word idea is open to the 
just objection, that it never can be known that 
A's ideas agree with B's ideas ; but it can be 
known for certain, whether A's words agree 
with B's words, because they can say, we do 
agree, and our words demonstrate to eye, and 
ear, and understanding that we do agree. Men 
may dispute for ever about what they call ideas, 
but if they are careful, they cannot dispute for 
ever about the words they themselves actually 
manufacture. They can number and measure, 
that is, make sure of their words. They can 
never measure or make sure of their ideas. 



180 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§4. 

No philosopher has ever given, and I say 
that no philosopher can possibly give, any 
sufficient reason why we are to stop at the 
end of the vibrations of our incar vying nerves, 
and think we are disputing, or can dispute, 
about the unknown something there produced 
in the mind called an idea ; instead of going 
on to the end of the vibrations of our out- 
carrying nerves, and to the effect made by 
the mind upon the larynx and pen, to the 
known or knowable effect, about which alone 
we can dispute — viz., the word which the 
human mind has caused those outward vi- 
brations to create, as an actual factor of 
human knowledge. The word is the creation 
of the human mind, the evidence of its ex- 
istence. The unknowable thing has passed 
into the idea, and the unknowable idea has 
passed into the word ; and words are the only 
things that can be known as they are in 
themselves by any child of man, let him talk 
as long as he may. 

To acknowledge and submit to this truth, 
is the first step in all true philosophy, and 



C. vi., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 181 

the object of this work is to establish it beyond 
contradiction. 

The error I am combating, seems to me the 
true source of all the wretched vain mate- 
rialism with which the world of man is now 
filled; at one time Panatheism, at another 
Pantheism ; the two poles between which the 
materialist perpetually oscillates in doubt, 
ignorance, and confusion, not understanding 
the words he uses ; but which words prove 
the real existence of the human mind itself. 

If any man says, " Surely I know more of 
the real nature of this world, when I have 
learnt the great truths of gravity, or chemical 
affinity, or chemical composition and re- 
duction, than I did before," I answer, " No, 
sir, you do not; you have learnt to think 
with Newton, and Lavoisier, and Dalton, and 
to use Newton's words, and Lavoisier's and 
Dalton's words, you have learnt to think with 
the great modern astronomers and chemists, 
and to use their words. Neither they nor 
you know anything more about the realities 
of matter and the universe than you did 
before. You have learnt a number of appear- 



1 82 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §4. 

ances, which affect the human senses, and 
have learnt to give them orderly names, so 
as to speak correctly with your fellow men, 
who have examined the same appearances, 
and have agreed to use the same names or 
words to express those numbers of appear- 
ances. Both they and you are as ignorant 
of all of the realities in the things you 
speak of, as ever savage was. You have 
learnt some new human words, signs, or sym- 
bols, the breath from our larynx and tongue, 
or black marks from the end of our pens ; 
and how to make and use those words, 
signs, and symbols, in consonance and mutual 
agreement with your well-instructed fellow 
men, but you have learnt nothing more what- 
ever ; and any other imagination of your 
heart is mere folly, emptiness, and delusion. 
Why are men for ever to deceive themselves, 
and shrink from the clear, the notorious fact, 
that all human truth can only be true words 
and symbols, mathematical truth ? 

It is passing strange to see how the posses- 
sion of a few words and symbols reduced to 
order, mere signs or tickets to assist the 



C. vi., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 183 

human mind to register a number of external 
appearances, of the real nature of any one 
of which man is wholly ignorant, puffs up the 
vain animal to think he has at length attained 
the mystery of nature ; and he talks of attrac- 
tions, and forces, and affinities, &c, as if they 
were some real things themselves, and not mere 
human words, mere signs and symbols made 
with his own tongue and pen, to assist his own 
and his neighbour's memory of the wonderful 
mysteries and unknowable operations which 
God has permitted them to glance at. They 
seem to me like pert sparrows hopping on the 
beam of a steam-engine, and mistaking its 
proper motion for the effect of their own 
proceedings, in condescending to fly about 
and take notice of its parts and motions. 

All scientific truth and certainty, therefore, 
is verbal truth and no more, and depends on 
deduction, and the truth and certainty of the 
first assumption, and of each step afterwards 
demonstrated. The value and utility of all 
science may depend on induction, but induc- 
tion can give us no truth whatever. Let us 
consider this more closely in another chapter. 



184 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vii.,§1. 



CHAPTER VII. 

INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, TRUTH. 

(1.) Knowledge Begins with Sensations 
and Naming. — Although I have demonstrated 
that numbers may be deduced strictly ci priori, 
from the mere admission that some know- 
ledge exists ; and that what is usually called 
by metaphysical writers, generalization or 
abstraction, may be more truly represented as 
an admission of ignorance, instead of an 
abstraction of knowledge, yet I would not 
be understood to mean that the first elements 
of knowledge are usually, in fact, learnt by 
deduction ; or that the more general is com- 
monly learnt before the less general, or the 
abstract before the concrete. Man is body 



C.vii., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 185 

and mind, and the body comes first, and the 
mind afterwards. He was first formed of the 
dust of the ground, and afterwards God 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. 
The tree of knowledge is tasted through the 
body, but the pure fruit of that tree is not 
body-like but mind-like. 

The child of course learns to count by 
his fingers or by an abacus, or by things 
visible or things tangible. I have heard a 
child who had learnt to count far beyond 
ten, exclaim to its mother, " Oh ! mamma, 
you have a short finger." It was igno- 
rant of the difference of its own fingers, and 
went round the room to see if everybody had 
short fingers like its mother and itself, when 
it had been shown its own little finger. 
It was teaching itself by induction, and was 
not inclined to believe the marvellous fact 
that all men had little fingers, till it could 
find no instance to the contrary, asking about 
each member of its family in succession, and 
going to several, five or six in the room, to 
see with its eyes, that all had little fingers. 
I saw the process and helped to satisfy it. 



1 8 6 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vn., § 1 . 

This, in learned phrase, was the highest 
species of induction, "post negativas tot quot 
sufficiunt super affirmativas concludere" The 
little philosopher was a little girl not five 
years old. 

Take another instance mentioned by Aris- 
totle of the Greek children calling out "wan/p" 
to a * stranger in the street, and which same 
thing may be easily verified with English 
children in their nurse's arms, calling out 
"papa" to a man as he goes by. This is gene- 
ralization, or making a general term. So a 
child of two years old will persist in calling 
the new nurse by the old one's name for many 
months. So I have asked a Scotch peasant 
child, " Whose house is that?" and received for 
answer, " It's the laird's hoos," but the name 
of the laird it could not give. So Adam 
Smith remarked, that a peasant knows no 
name for the rivers running by his door, 
except the north river or the west river, &c. 

Is this process of naming, abstraction of 
knowledge as philosophers generally say, or 
want of perception, say ignorance of differ- 
ences ? I think the latter. The child has for- 



C.vil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 187 

gotten the individual difference, or does not 
perceive the difference. The dress or look of 
the men, the acts of the nurses, deceive the 
child, and it calls out the word that has pro- 
cured attention or kindness. In short, there 
is no novelty in all this. Whatever passes in 
the child's mind, we are wholly ignorant of it ; 
but it has been seen for 2,000 years, that all 
knowledge begins with single bodily sensa- 
tions, with singulars, and is built up synthe- 
tically by induction, and recorded by giving 
general names. Knowledge is not obtained 
by abstract deductions, at the first. The 
absurdity lies, however, in therefore conclud- 
ing that Truth is founded on Induction. That, 
I say, is a most ridiculous non sequitur. 

(2.) No Truth and Certainty from In- 
duction. — Let us grant the utmost that can 
be asked. There can be no doubt that all 
knowledge begins with sensations, which are 
transformed by the mind, judging by induction 
from numerous instances, into thoughts and 
verbal images, or words. It is equally clear 
that all science, which is knowledge rendered 
accurate by man's carefulness, begins with the 



188 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 2. 

practical and concrete, and is gradually trans- 
formed by men of science into the pure and 
abstract. 

There cannot be a rational doubt, in my 
opinion, but that geometry was at first what 
its name implies — land measuring. That a 
straight line was a stretched string ; that the 
first definition of a straight Jine was, in all 
probability, " the shortest line between two 
points," derived from the actual concrete 
process of stretching, and so straightening a 
land measuring line, and finding it less than 
any other; and that the axiom "that two 
straight lines cannot? enclose a space," was 
arrived at and verified by stretching two lines 
from the same visible point. An angle was, 
no doubt, at first the corner of a field, and so 
on through all plane geometrical words. 

What then, is Mr. Mill right after all? and 
is pure geometry founded on the induction of 
generals from numbers of particulars, and 
its certainty and truth founded on induction ? 
That, I say, is Mr. Mill's own most absurd 
non-sequitur, a mere confounding the use 
of the body, with the truth of the mind; 



C.vn.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 189 

the use that we feel and see, with the truth 
that we think and speak. It is, in fact, 
merely a new form of that old materialistic 
snake which I have tried to exhibit and scotch 
throughout these pages; that wretched shuffle, 
which calls and desires to call the thinking 
and ^oft-thinking thing by the same name, to 
call A and not A by one and the same term, 
to call truth and not truth simply Truth, and 
then, to pass this process off for logic and 
philosophy ! 

Induction is as the body, and Deduction as 
the mind. Induction and the body may give 
us the materials for many sensations and 
useful guesses, but cannot give us one truthful 
thought. Our calliyig the process of induction 
a method of arriving at truth, or calling certain 
conclusions inductive truths, will not make 
them pure truths. Truth, pure truth, is the 
province of deduction only, and induction never 
yet gave us one pure truth, or anything more 
than a probable guess; or some very probable 
explanation, provisional only," till a better is 
found out. 

Let it be granted, therefore, that the senses 



190 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§2. 

are the avenue to all knowledge whatever, as 
Aristotle said long ago. Induction is the 
process of the mind, gathering one conclusion 
from many sensations, whether with or with- 
out crucial experiments, negativing a sufficient 
number of possible explanations. The con- 
clusion itself is a mental conclusion, and the 
process is a mental process, entirely removed 
from the senses and from sensation ; it is the 
work of the higher reason, of the human ima- 
gination and of the highest mental faculties, 
and is duly completed by embodying the induc- 
tive thought in a word. Well, then, have we 
got a truth, a pure or certain truth, whatever 
number of crucial experiments, whatever 
number, tot quot sufficiunt, of negativing ex- 
periments we have made ? I say, no ! Man's 
mind can never exhaust the negative. The 
highest induction is post 7iegativas tot quot 
sufficiunt. But how are we to exhaust the 
negatives ? A is A, but not A is infinite. 
Every induction is an attempt to prove the 
negative, that NO other possible arrangement, 
no other possible cause, no other possible ex- 
planation can exist or be given. It is that 



C.vii.,§2.j THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 191 

very argument from inconceivability, upon 
which, on other occasions, Mr. Mill can be so 
severe. Every highest induction includes, 
and is founded on this principle, that we 
have tried every other conceivable explanation 
and negatived it, but this is impossible to 
man. Every induction, therefore, gives us 
only a prohable guess, not truth. It is as 
different from pure truth as man's body is 
from man's mind. Men lose themselves in 
the concrete and sensuous, and worship the 
materialistic idols their senses have created, 
and then confound what is only probably true, 
in relation to man's senses and faculties, with 
what is' really true and necessary, or deny the 
existence of necessarv truth altogether. 

It is the labour of a logical Sisyphus to 
roll up words, pretending to establish " the 
justification of the scientific method of in- 
duction as against the unscientific, notwith- 
standing that the scientific ultimately rests 
on the unscientific." l All the argument in 
the world will never prove a negative, and 

1 "Mill's Logic," vol. ii., p. 102. 



192 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn., §2. 

the highest induction is founded on proving a 
negative. 

The scientific, we say, does not rest on the 
unscientific, it rests on the first assumption. 
From that it hangs, or ought to hang, by posi- 
tive links, strictly proved to mental demon- 
stration, otherwise it is only pseudo scientific 
false accuracy, it is not truth : it is not pure 
truth. But, on the contrary, if every step be 
so demonstratively proved by deduction, then 
the conclusion is as necessary, that is as never- 
ceasing, as is the first assumption. It hangs 
on the first one or more assumptions, and its 
necessity can never, of course, exceed the 
never-ceasingness of that first one or more 
assumptions from which it is deduced. 

By Induction we gain what we feel to be 
useful ; by Deduction we gain what we know 
to be true. No knowledge is strictly true or 
certain, that is not strictly deduced, and its 
truth and certainty depend entirely on the 
truth and certainty of the first principles 
assumed, and from which it can be strictly 
deduced. Induction is mere mental guess- 
work from bodily sensations, partaking of all 



C. vil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 93 

the imperfection of the human senses, some- 
times right and sometimes wrong, words 
adopted because useful to the mind, as rest- 
ing-places till the mind can reach something 
higher. Deduction is the work of the soul, of 
the mind itself, working with verbal ab- 
stractions. All truth and all certainty comes 
from the soul and mind by deduction. No 
pure truth, no certainty, can ever come from 
induction ; and a guess, a probable guess, is 
the highest conclusion, which by induction, 
man can arrive at. 

The sensuous is transformed into the intel- 
lectual, and the intellectual into words. The 
rude, inaccurate concrete is mentally trans- 
formed into the pure and true abstract ; into 
that Platonic divine ideal which is perfect, true, 
and never-ceasing; into words, signs, and sym- 
bols, which can never be false. Land measuring 
was not pure geometry, was not pure truth 
or certainty, but only sufficiently true, i.e., not 
true absolutely, but sufficient for some prac- 
tical purposes. There it must have stopped 
on the earth, confined to a few rough contri- 
vances for the comparison of distant fields. 

K 



194 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§2. 

This is not truth, but rule of thumb truth, as 
one can often see an accurate woman measure 
with her fingers, as well as a shopman with 
the exact length of Norman Henry's guard 
arm, which, by Act of Parliament, became an 
English yard. But has this any resemblance 
to pure geometrical or numerical truths ? It 
is not truth at all ; though it passes for 
rough, rule of thumb truth, sufficiently true 
for practical purposes. 

But when the mind has formed the true 
and pure ideal out of the impure and untrue 
actual, then it can develop by verbal deduc- 
tion new and altogether unforseen and unex- 
pected relations altogether remote from the 
observed actual ; and at first, and often for 
ages, the deductions remain without any ap- 
parent utility, or any connexion, or applica- 
tion to sublunary matters. Ages after their 
first development as Truth, they turn out to 
be Useful. Who ever tested by any induction 
the truths of the ellipse or hyperbola, whose 
properties were elaborated 2,000 years ago 
by the Greeks ? The properties of the ellipse 
thus discovered by pure deduction, remained 



C. vii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 195 

practically useless for 1,800 years or so, till 
Kepler and Newton applied them to the earth 
and the heavenly bodies above and without us. 
The hyperbola, I believe, still remains without 
much practical application of its most remark- 
able properties, though they were discovered 
by pure deduction so many centuries ago. 
Surely, the man is trifling with words, or is 
wholly ignorant of pure mathematics, who 
asserts that the truth and certainty of the 
properties of the ellipse and hyperbola depend 
in any manner whatever upon induction. 
Induction had no more to do with their dis- 
covery than the sense of smell with a musical 
symphony. The smell may have told a 
blind fiddler where to find his rosin, and some 
men may say, if they choose, that the blind 
man's music w r as arrived at from the smell of 
the rosin on the fiddle stick by induction ! 
but that is merely giving a new meaning to 
the word induction not worthy of discussion. 

The hyperbola is the curve which fluids 
assume in the capillary tubes of organised 
bodies, and, therefore, actually exists in the 
Human Brain. It is a curve with its centre 

K 2 



196 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§3. 

outside, which requires to be balanced with 
a similar curve on the opposite side of the 
centre ; a curve which approaches indefinitely- 
near, but never attains true contact with, the 
right lines, the asymptotes, that pass through 
its centre. The hyperbola possesses many 
more resemblances to the course of the human 
mind and reason towards Truth, than the 
common application of its name to hyper- 
bolical expressions and arguments. 

But induction is to deduction, as the human 
body is to the human soul, and this is not a 
metaphor, but an analogy. Induction can 
never be, so far as we know, wholly true. It 
can never give pure and perfect truths, but 
only partial and imperfect bodily truths, 
guesses in relation to the human senses, sug- 
gestive of words, mere resting-places for the 
mind. At last the resting-place becomes a 
sleeping-place, and the induction a dead body, 
stopping up the course of science. 

(3.) The Ptolemaic System an Induction. — 
The Ptolemaic svstem was an induction, and 
up to a certain extent, in a certain sense, a 
sufficiently truthful and useful induction. 



C. vil, § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 197 

Nay, for some purposes, as, for example, to 
calculate eclipses, if we had to begin at the 
beginning without tables or telescopes, it 
would be more useful than the Copernican 
system, even including Newton's great disco- 
very of the laws of central forces. Motion is 
a mere relation, and to the eye of the modern 
mathematician, it is wholly indifferent and 
irrelevant, which of the bodies stands still and 
which moves, or where the centre is to which 
the relation must be referred. But we cannot 
prevent puzzle-headed men, who have not 
studied deeply enough, from seeing a puzzle 
where there is none, or from shutting their 
eyes, so as to let in only half the light. 

A few years ago, a learned Inspector of 
Schools, by shutting his eyes to the sun, as 
the acknowledged centre of our planetary 
system, persuaded himself and a great many 
equally puzzle-headed people, that the moon did 
not turn on its axis. In reference to the earth, 
she does not turn, but in reference to the sun, 
the acknowledged centre of our planetary 
system, she does. It would have been quite 
as wise, and just as true, to tell us that the 



1 98 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 3. 

moon does not go round the earth in an 
ellipse, but performs vagaries in space more 
like the Vandyke work on a lady's collar 1 
than an ellipse or elongated circle ; or if a 
person were to tell us that the earth does not 




1 It is impossible to put upon paper anything near the 
moon's actual motion, so far as known ; but the above van- 
dyke skipping is nearer its true motion than a perfect 
ellipse, for if m m' m" be three new moons, when the moon 
is between the earth and the sun, and M M' two full moons, 
when the earth is between the moon and sun, and E E' E" E'" 
positions of the earth at new and full moon respectively ; 
while the moon has been travelling from m to M, the earth 
has travelled from E to E', so as to get between the sun and 
M at the full ; and so, by the time the moon has moved to 
the next new moon at m', the earth has got to E", and the moon 
has then to come back again, and so on ; so that having regard 
to the sun, moon, and earth, the actual path of the moon in 
space is very far from, and not the least like an ellipse or 
elongated circle, but more like vandyking on a lady's collar. 
But the man who would thence conclude that the moon 
does not perform an ellipse round the earth, and that Kepler 
and Newton were wrong, is simply ignorant, and must try 
and learn better what is meant by the composition of motions, 
and what it was that Kepler and Newton actually discovered. 
Dr. Brinckley is my authority for saying, that for the pur- 
pose of calculating eclipses, without tables or telescopes, the 
Ptolemaic is more useful than the truer Copernican System. 



C. vii., § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 199 

go round the sun in an ellipse, because, as Sir 
J. Herschel tells us, she performs " a compli- 
cated spiral" in space, and an ellipse is a 
curve returning into itself, and to the same 
point of space ; but that the fact is, as is well 
known, that the earth never comes back at 
the end of its annual circuit round the sun to 
the same point of space, but to a different point, 
and so never completes its ellipse ; ergo, its 
actual motion is not an ellipse ; and, therefore, 
Kepler and Newton were altogether wrong ! 
This, in fact, would be no worse reasoning, 
and more justifiable than Mr. Mill and Mr. 
Spencer's trash about pure geometry; because 
to see its falsehood and absurdity, requires 
far deeper reading and more mathematical 
knowledge, than to see that the asses' bridge 
does not depend for its truth and certainty 
" upon induction," and is not proved " by an 
intuition" from any particular figure what- 
ever. 

(4.) Utility and Truth. — As the senses 
and body of man are dull and imperfect, and 
can never make a perfect instrument ; so in- 
duction can never give man a perfect truth. 



200 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. 

The highest induction, as we have said, is 
founded on proving a negative, which is im- 
possible. Mr. Mill admits this in Causation : 
" We are, in no case, empowered positively to 
conclude that the addition of some new ante- 
cedent might not entirely alter and subvert 
the accustomed consequent, or that antece- 
dents competent to do this do not exist in 
nature." 1 This is true of the very highest 
induction; and however numerous the affirma- 
tive instances and the negativing experiments, 
a miracle is possible always. 

Induction, therefore, on Mr. Mill's own 
authority, never gives us 'pure truth and cer- 
tainty. Its conclusions, though called induc- 
tive truths, are not and never can be truth ; 
and should not be confounded with Truth. 
They are practically useful only, and not 
strictly true and certain. It is otherwise with 
deduction, which can and does give us per- 
fectly true and certain conclusions, though 
not with regard to any existences external to 
our own minds. The truths of arithmetic and 
pure geometry are perfectly pure and certain, 
1 "Logic," vol. ii., p. 349. 



C. vii., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 201 

and all pure mathematics gives us perfectly 
pure and certain truths, altogether true and 
necessary, or never-ceasing; truths which 
could not be otherwise than they are in any 
intellect whatever. But this is because they 
concern mere human imaginations, human 
words, mere creations of the human intellect 
itself. The units and symbols of arithmetic, 
and the lines, angles and figures of pure geo- 
metry, are pure mental existences. Euclid 
affirms nothing concerning anything existing 
externally to the human mind, however appli- 
cable to all external existences, but merely 
concerning mental imaginations embodied in 
defined words, abstract existences in the mind 
only of him who can create them. The rela- 
tions of mathematical lines without breadth, of 
surfaces without thickness, are the mere crea- 
tions of the human mind itself. The perfect 
units that an arithmetician imagines are merely 
mental existences, and their relations, where 
the mind clearly perceives them, are un- 
changeable and never-ceasing, i. e., necessary 
in every intellect able to create them. Ne- 
cessity is not " unconditionalness," but never- 

K 5 



202 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. 

ceasingness. The necessity follows from the 
first creation of the abstraction in the human 
mind, it applies to no other than to the intel- 
lect that is able to create the abstractions. 

To the mind that has created for itself these 
abstractions, it is self-contradiction to suppose 
them or their relations changeable. A man 
who has created in his own intellect, perfectly 
equal units, not only cannot conceive them 
or their relations destroyed, but he cannot 
possibly alter their relations when once clearly 
known. No amount of intellectual exertion 
can make such a man suppose or conceive 
five and three to be nine. It is not that it is 
merely inconceivable, but it is se/f-contradic- 
tion. I cannot stand on my head, or believe 
that I do so, at the same time that I am 
standing on my feet, I cannot deny my own 
existence. 

It is not only inconceivable or impossible 
to a mathematician, but it is positive self- 
contradiction, to suppose the square on the 
hypothenuse either greater or less than the 
two squares on the sides of a right-angled 
triangle. It is a clear, positive, self-contra- 
diction, to think the contrary, after once 



C. vil, § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 203 

admitting the definition of parallel lines. To 
tell a man who sees this as pure geome- 
tricians usually see it, that it is a mere habit, 
is like telling a man that he could and does 
walk on his head, at the same time that 
he knows that he is walking on his feet, and 
that it is a mere habit his supposing that he 
walks on his feet, or that of two things both 
cannot be first. The appeal is not merely to 
inconceivability, but to positive self-contradic- 
tion, to the denial of a man's own existence. 

Here is where concrete materialistic logic 
and philosophy depart from truth and cer- 
tainty. They confound truth with utility, they 
confound the human mind with the human 
body ; the pure creations of truth in the mind, 
with the imperfect sensuous existences, which 
the body feels to be useful. They confound 
the pure truths of strict deduction with the 
imperfect truths, but useful guesses, of the 
highest induction. In short, they desire to 
call and do call A and not- A. by the same 
name, the sacred name of Truth. 

Now, the utility of all abstract conceptions 
entirely depends on our being able to find in 



204 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. 

nature representatives of our abstractions, and 
on our being able to reduce them to measure, 
by number, space and time. A measurable fixed 
unit in external nature is essential to utility, 
but not to Truth. When the Arabians, for 
example, measured an arc of the meridian in 
the sixteenth century, and recorded the result 
in barleycorns, the utility depends on the cer- 
tainty of barleycorns as measures of space. 
The uncertainty of the measure renders the 
proceeding of little utility or value to us, but 
does not in any way affect the abstract truth 
that if the earth is a sphere, then measuring 
the arc of a great circle will tell us its size. 
The truth of the abstract reasoning is quite 
independent and wholly unaffected by the 
utility of its concrete application. An accu- 
rate measure of space has remained a deside- 
ratum down to the present day ; but whether 
we actually measure with the length of a 
pendulum in a fixed latitude, or as English- 
men still do in common matters, with the 
length of Norman Henry's guard arm, now 
called a yard, cannot affect the pure truth of 
our abstract reasoning. 



C. vii., § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 205 

It is, therefore, wholly unfounded, that any 
true " consequence in pure geometry follows 
from the proposition or first principle, that 
figures answering to the description of a circle 
exist in external nature" 1 The utility of 
geometrical deductions follows from this prin- 
ciple ; but their pure, abstract, perfect, and 
necessary truth is wholly independent of it, 
and bears no relation to it whatever, no more 
or nearer relation than the abstract thought 
in my mind bears to another man's body. The 
conclusions of geometry are true and neces- 
sary, and are quite independent of the real ex- 
ternal existence of any thing in nature called 
by men a circle ; the utility of those conclu- 
sions does depend on such external existences. 
Pure truth is in the mind alone ; utility has 
relation to the body and external nature: 
Inductive truths are only useful guesses, but 
pure deductive truths are not only true, but 
wholly unchangeable and necessary. But the 
necessity or never-ceasingness can never be 
greater than the truth and necessity of the 
first abstract creation, the first assumption, 
1 " Logic," vol. i., p. 286. 



206 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn.,§5. 

from which the deduction hangs by necessary- 
links of demonstration. 

(5.) Dalton's Law dedncihle and necessary 
Why? a demonstration of it. — Take, for 
example, Dalton's illustrious discovery of 
definite proportions in chemistry; the law that 
the ultimate particles or atoms of chemical sub- 
stances combine in definite proportions. To 
any man with a mathematical head, to a man 
like Dr. Whewell, for example, the mere state- 
ment of the law is, and must be, not only mani- 
festly an inductive conclusion from Dalton's 
experiments ; but by assuming the term ulti- 
mate particles, or atom, it can be made and 
becomes a mathematical, a pure, perfect, and 
necessary truth. It can never cease to be a 
truth in any intellect whatever. Mr. Mill 
lifts up his hands, or at least his pen, in asto- 
nishment, at such a daring statement from 
Dr. Whewell, as that Dalton's law is a neces- 
sary truth. But the confusion of materialistic 
logic, or its critical sneers, or wonder, cannot 
enable a tolerably clear head to admit self-con- 
tradiction. The law is easily demonstrated 
by the inverse method. Thus, for example : 



C. vil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 207 

Proposition. — If A, a chemical substance, 
combines with B, another chemical substance, 
to form C ; the ultimate particles of A com- 
bined in C bear a definite proportion to the 
ultimate particles of B combined in C. 

Proof. — For, let a be any ultimate particle 
of A, and b any ultimate particle of B, and 
suppose the contrary hypothesis possible, viz., 
that a combines not only with n. b to form C, 
but also combines with (n -|- n') b to form C. 
We then have a particle of C = a. (n -j- n') b. 
But this is not an ultimate particle of C, be- 
cause by the hypothesis we are given a less 
particle, viz., C = a. n b. Therefore, not 
being an ultimate particle of C, the particle 
a (n + n') b can be divided. But every particle 
of C must remain C till we get to the ultimate 
particle of C, therefore in the division of the 
particle a. (n + n ) b, the particle a itself 
must be divided, and a given as the ultimate 
particle in the hypothesis, is not an ultimate 
particle, which is absurd, and a self-contra- 
diction. Therefore the contrary hypothesis 
is absurd. Therefore every ultimate particle 



208 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn.,§5. 

a can only combine with a definite propor- 
tion, viz., n b, to form C. ergo, &c, Q. E. D. 

If materialistic logic cannot see the force 
of this reasoning, it is to regretted ; but we 
cannot be asked to contradict ourselves to 
suit the elastic logical perceptions of self- 
puzzled materialists; or, as Dr. Whewell 
justly says, to believe in a world of confusion 
and contradiction, as the handiwork of God ! 
Not only the intellectual but the moral per- 
ceptions of mankind reject the contrary absurd 
hypothesis, and establish the necessary truth 
of Dalton's great discovery. 

But now, in what respect, and why, is 
Dalton's law not only true but necessary f 
It is wholly founded on the fundamental 
assumption that all chemical substances have 
ultimate particles, or atoms, indivisible. From 
that it is strictly deducible, as I have shown 
and demonstrated above. We invent and 
manufacture the word, "ultimate-particle" 
or atom. Our demonstration, and the whole 
meaning and force of Dalton's law hangs 
upon that word. The mental conception 
represented by that word, ultimate-particle, 



C. vil, §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 209 

or atom, is a pure mental human creation. 
Of the wondrous constitution of things in 
themselves, we know nothing and affirm no- 
thing. Like children standing on the shores 
of the ocean of truth, we fling in our little 
pebbles, and strive to count the ripples that 
they make. Newton's own illustration of 
his own wondrous discovery of the law of 
the heavens above us, cannot be better or 
more properly applied, than to Dalton's almost 
equally wondrous discovery of the law of the 
minutest particles of unorganised matter 
in the world beneath our eyes. Yet so con- 
sidered, that law is not only true, but neces- 
sary and never-ceasing. 

But concerning that external world itself, 
Dalton's law, arrived at by induction, or so 
deduced as aforesaid, does affirm nothing. It 
is a verbal truth only, which we may freely 
apply until it shall be superseded by some 
abstract generalization, still wider and still 
more necessary, where the conception, or 
word ultimate-particle, or atom, may disap- 
pear from science altogether, as wholly in- 
sufficient and inadequate to represent the 



210 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 5. 

phenomena which He, who is holy, just, and 
true, may think proper to permit some of his 
children to discover and understand. 

It never can be too often or too strongly 
impressed upon men, philosophers or not, that 
all human truth is verbal truth only. Induc- 
tive or deductive, it is alike in that respect ; 
call it truth or call it utility, it is and can be 
only words applied to practice. 

It is absurd to ask whether man's body or 
mind is most useful to knowledge, or in order 
to gain knowledge. Without a body, i.e., 
without sensation, " He can neither know nor 
learn anything." Without a mind, the same 
result must follow. It is equally absurd to 
ask whether induction or deduction is most 
useful as a guide to knowledge, i. e. 9 true 
knowledge. In man's present state, it is im- 
posible to say which is most useful. 

But, nevertheless, induction only collects 
the crude materials, as the body collects the 
crude sensations, from which deduction, like 
the mind, selects and purifies some few fun- 
damental truths, and thence leads the way 
along the paths of mathematics to the most 



C. vil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 211 

beautiful and unexpected mental, and verbal, 
and bodily discoveries, both true and useful, 
and applicable to external nature; true, in 
words only, but useful and applicable to 
human wants and human doings in the world 
and universe around us. 

Note. — The objection that chemists are forced some- 
times to divide an indivisible atom, is not fatal to Dalton's 
theory, as Sir J. Herschel has remarked.* Proportion is 
not affected by division, however often continued; but 
throughout nature it is the apparent exceptions that should 
be curiously examined to suggest deeper views of her ope- 
rations. We must try and measure the anomaly numeri- 
cally. Water and bismuth seem to differ from all other 
substances by expanding on becoming solid from cold. Can 
the amount be measured, in proportion to their weight or 
density, numerically? It is from such examples that 
deeper views of the constitution of matter may be obtained. 

* "Essays," p. 232. 



2 1 2 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viii., § l. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LIFE AND MIND. 

(I.) An Example of the PRODUCT Hypo- 
thesis in Verbal Discussion. — Let us illustrate 
by an example, if possible, what we practically 
mean by calling abstract general terms num- 
bers, products of abstract factors ; each factor 
being some supposed likeness of the unit 
adopted or chosen to mark out and limit the 
class. Let us select those very abstract terms 
Life and Mind. Certain philosophers of the 
present day earnestly seek to establish the 
doctrine of the identity of Life and Mind ; 
not that mind possesses some higher life, ana- 
logous only to the lower life of the body ; but 
that the human mind has grown and been de- 



C.viii.,§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 21 8 

veloped by some law of vegetable, and animal, 
and nervous growth. In short, that man 
grew on this earth according to some law, out 
of a lichen, a zoophyte, or protozoon ! 

The two classes here proposed for compari- 
son, are what men call living things, and what 
men call mental things ; not the mental acts 
of an intelligent spaniel, an ant, a bee, or a 
beaver, adapting their actions and materials 
to the peculiar circumstances in which they 
happen to be placed by nature, or may for 
experiment have been placed by man ; but 
that higher Mind or reason, that imagina- 
tion, those sentiments of benevolence, venera- 
tion, justice, or other higher human qualities 
influencing the human Will, which in all ages, 
from Aristotle downwards, have been recog- 
nised by intelligent men, as distinguishing 
mankind mentally, from the lower animals, 
and which mental sentiments or principles I 
would denominate, the Human Will; but 
which is commonly called the higher Eeason, 
or the human Mind. 

It is of course as old as the logic of the 
Greeks, to call in every discussion for a defi- 



214 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1 . 

nition, consisting of the genus and essential 
difference; two words to limit the word or 
thing proposed for discussion. But if my 
theory of all words being numbers and 'pro- 
ducts be well founded, that theory which I 
insist I have demonstrated beyond possible 
contradiction by any man who speaks and can 
add thoughts or words together correctly ; I 
have entitled a reasoner to ask for, and de- 
mand expressly, every abstract word ox factor 
which is to compound the thoughts of, or 
words Life and Mind, in this discussion. The 
likenesses of living things in general, and of 
human mental things in general, must be 
given us, till we arrive at simple fundamental 
thoughts, or indecomposable words. What 
likenesses, I ask therefore, do you mean to 
say, produce the thoughts, Life and Mind, if 
you want us to agree with you ? Don't beat 
about the bush for a grammatical definition, 
but jot down all the factors which you say 
properly produce in us these deep and ab- 
stract thoughts, life and human mind. 

Let us turn up, therefore, almost any good 
book on physiology, and let us just put down 



C. viil, § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 215 

some of the best established fundamental 
thoughts, or indecomposable abstract words, 
recognised by almost all intelligent observers 
of Life, as the likenesses possessed in common 
by all living things. Every living thing has, 
they tell us — 

Substance, or matter and form, 

Organization, 

Absorpfo'oTi, 

Assimilation, 

Secretion-, 

Reproduction ; 

So far vegetable life. 

Add Sensation, for a zoophyte : 

Add Nervous action, ~) . 

n. r ior animals. 

or intelligence, ) 

Your word life, or living thing, as distinct 
from human life, including Mind, or man's 
higher Reason or Will, includes all the above 
deep and difficult things, thoughts, or words. 

What do we know about all these deep 
and difficult actions and things ? Cuvier and 
Owen will fear to tread where Herbert 
Spencer, Mr. Darwin, and the " Westminster 
Review," will run a muck. 



216 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C viil, § 1. 

Now, if the reader will patiently look over 
our list of the above, to some extent, recog- 
nised factors, producing the thought or idea 
of Life, or the word living thing, he will 
find seven words ending in Hon, each of which 
implies some secret ACTION or process, pro- 
ceeding actively in every living being, five 
actions in vegetable life, six in a zoophyte, 
and seven in an animal, all different, for which 
actions, physiologists have been compelled by 
phenomena, by facts clearly presented to their 
senses, to invent and adopt new and distinct 
names, in order to be understood. Of each of 
these secret actions, the most learned physiolo- 
gists are profoundly ignorant ! who can pretend 
to tell us any truth concerning the difference 
between the adjustment or arrangement in a 
dead crystal, and the adjustment or arrange- 
ment called organization in a living body? One 
simple-minded man did indeed think that he 
had produced a mite in his galvanic battery, 
when he expected a crystal of alumina to ap- 
pear. If the A earns Crossii is to be received 
as a distinct species into the animal kingdom, 
we must go back to crystallization. But what 



C. viil, § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 217 

do we know about the growth or production 
of organs in living beings ; the absorption of 
the peculiar food by the roots or absorbent 
vessels; the judgment, the discrimination ex- 
ercised in seeking and absorbing only the 
proper food, and so on ; each action of the 
living body as it were widening in its mira- 
culous circle, and becoming more and more 
obscure at every step, more obscure to the 
patient, and thoughtful, and conscientious 
observer. 

But if the light within is darkness, pos- 
sibly the darkness thinks itself enlightened 
by the long words in which physiologists tell 
the thoughts produced in their minds; the 
long words which express that something, 
that has passed along our minute incarrying 
nerves into our infinitely minute nervous brain 
cells ; and there been inspected and recorded 
by man's intellectual faculties, and then sent 
forth once more along our minute outcarrying 
nerves, to the larynx and the tongue, or to 
the ends of our fingers and the pen, and 
turned into long words. 

But all this manufacture of words is only 

L 



218 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1 . 

the first process of the human intellect, that 
intellect which to some extent man shares 
with the ant and the spider. We have not 
yet reached the threshold, or I had almost said 
within an infinite distance of the threshold 
of the pure human Mind or higher Reason, 
those higher sentiments, that human Will 
which shakes us with love, veneration, justice, 
wonder, remorse or FEAR, if it can yet com- 
mence in the MIND of the philosophic reader. 
Yes, FEAR ! the beginning of wisdom and 
knowledge, that fear and awe of God, that 
should agitate your nerves as you contemplate 
the wondrous scene without, and the more 
wonderful scene within your brain, and should 
bring you down in humble adoration of the 
Being, whose laws of mind and matter you 
have so often wilfully violated ; ay ! tens of 
thousands of times, hating where you should 
have loved, despising and scorning where you 
should have venerated, violating justice and 
truth in thought, and word, and deed; and 
for years, from boyhood to manhood, wilfully 
stifling remorse, and shutting your eyes to the 
brink of that eternity on which you have 



C. viii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 219 

always been standing. Oh ! may we yet be 
able to say, "I will arise and go to this 
Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have 
sinned before Heaven, and in Thy sight, and 
may we find peace, that peace which can make 
us, not as others are, which have no hope." 

But to return to our discussion of Life. Is 
there any resting-place between considering 
life and mind, wholly distinct ; and the other 
theory, that every particle of matter, or- 
ganised and unorganised, possesses intelligence 
enabling it to think and to select and make 
choice of its companion particle or particles, in 
the same way as a man selects and chooses his 
own companions, books of words, bodies of 
things, or minds of persons, to act and react 
upon his own mental frame, for his own mental 
pleasures and moral purposes ? Why are we 
to begin with life and organisation ? Why not 
go back to crystals and unorganised matter ? 
The particles of a chemical mixture, of 
almost any kind, for example, exhibit affini- 
ties, likings, dislikings, preferences, and per- 
versities, quite different, but quite as strange 
and mysterious, and causally unknown, as do 

L 2 



220 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viii., § 1. 

the absorbent vessels or the organs of a living 
being. The facts and phenomena we see and 
observe ; but the reason and meaning we hide 
under a word — the word chemical affinity; a 
disposition to unite ; elective or selective, and, 
moreover, definite — under Dalton's law nume- 
rically proportional ; actually mathematical, 
and, as I have shown, ante p. 207, and abso- 
lutely necessary, if we admit the word ulti- 
mate particle or atom to mean anything 
at all. 

Oh ! but you will say, life is not definite, it 
is not chemical affinity. Life suspends che- 
mical affinity, more or less. Life selects, but 
not in definite proportions. The organs are 
not the same, and the absorption will vary a 
little, even in the same living being at different 
times. The assimilating process will vary; 
the secretions will vary, even in the same 
organs, within certain limits, and at different 
times ; there is a variableness in Life, and not 
a definiteness. In short, there is a tendency, 
one might say, to free will, within certain 
limits, in every living body. And when we 
Gome to sensation, and nervous action, and to 



C. vm., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 221 

intelligence in animals, there is more and 
more tendency to free will or to free choice, 
within certain limits, instead of to any hard 
numerical proportions or dejiniteness. 

The way in which life is supported, and is 
continued or reproduced, is not definite, but 
varies more and more, the higher the kind of 
life examined. The hard mechanical necessity 
of living on one spot, and dying there like a 
plant, if its appointed food is not brought to 
its absorbent vessels, gives place to loco- 
motion. The young of a fixed zoophyte will 
play and disport themselves, till they settle 
down into the fixed sponge ! Perfect animal 
locomotion follows, till at last all life is spent 
in the search for animal gratifications. Well, 
it seems that a discussion of life tends rather 
to free will than to necessity. As life de- 
velopes before us, in the succession of natural 
living creatures, it does seem more like the 
true and real development of absolute free 
tvill, than like a procession to any iron-like 
or unbending necessity. We go on from lower 
life to higher life, gradually increasing free 
will, until nerves do not seem to follow any 



222 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1. 

absolute laws whatever, but seem gradually to 
be able to exercise greater and greater free 
choice or will. " I confess/' says Agassiz, 
" that I cannot say in what the mental faculties 
of a child differ from those of a young chim- 
panzee." — On Classify p. 89. — " But then," 
he adds, " organisation cannot be caused by 
physical agents; it is utterly impossible to 
maintain the idea of any genetic connexion 
between them. A fish, a crab, a mussel, 
living in the same waters, breathing at the 
same source, should have the same respiratory 
organs, if the elements in which these animals 
live had anything to do with shaping their 
organisation." — Ibid, p. 93. In short, life 
varies and rises, and free choice ox free will 
extends and developes itself. 

Here we have only glimpsed at the wonders 
of absorption by endosemose, and at the 
growth of varied organisation, under like sur- 
rounding circumstances, the two first only 
of our seven selective actions clearly involved 
in animal life. Who can describe the varied 
mysteries of assimilation to each different 
living being, selecting what it will assimilate 



C. viii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 223 

to itself and its tissues? or the still more 
varied mysteries of secretions within the bodies 
of each living being, to produce its various 
parts ; each selecting organ selecting its own 
peculiar want, and working out its own pe- 
culiar produce by its own functions, varying 
from time to time its modus operandi, so as 
to produce as near as may be even a deformed 
likeness of the type it prefers ? Then come 
the deeper mysteries of the reproduction of 
plants and animals, widening and widening in 
difficulty as we contemplate infinitesimal 
germs. We find embryos insheathed in em- 
bryos, and germs enclosed within other germs ; 
yet, neverthless, all endowed with some un- 
known power to select and choose the peculiar 
matter which they like, from the matter 
which they do not like, whereby to nourish 
the youthful being, " after its kind." 

But it is needless, nor am I at all competent 
to proceed with any proper and full description 
of all the other free actions of life and intel- 
ligence in the animal kingdom, below the 
moral mental life of man. No one who thinks, 
or has even casually studied the ordinary won* 



224 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vm., § 1. 

ders of animal life and animal intelligence, in 
physiological works, can possibly suppose that 
our knowledge of life, and its processes and 
actions, is already such as to enable us to form 
the most dim guess of probability, whether 
the nervous intelligence of an animal could de- 
velop itself into the reason and higher powers 
of a moral and religious-minded man — of, for 
example, a Socrates. But, one thing does seem 
more probable than another, and it is this : that 
all the marks and symptoms of a free and inde- 
pendent will do increase as we rise higher and 
higher, until we reach mankind, whose indi- 
vidual arbitrariness, whose absolute free will, 
within the limits of his faculties, would be 
established by analogy and induction, if any 
such question can be proved by induction or 
by analogy from the life of the lower animals. 
Life, therefore, seems to lead us up to the 
human mind and human free will, not by 
growth of particles, but by a kind of analogy. 
If we find choice and selection of activity 
existing in every department of nature, wi- 
dening, extending, and increasing its free 
choice and free action, as we rise through the 



C. viii., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 225 

vegetable and animal kingdoms, till we find it 
culminating in man — the most fickle, and 
changeable, and uncertain being upon earth — 
it must require a most marvellous defect of 
reason, for this being to think that the law of 
nature has stopped short with him, and that 
he is subject to some iron necessity, instead 
of taking and arriving at the very opposite 
conclusion ; that free will and free choice, the 
absolute power to select his own modes of 
action within their limits, must have received 
in man, its greatest worldly development, 
whether as a reason for his responsibility or 
not. But how is this nervous free will to be 
compared with the higher mental freedom, the 
moral qualities and powers peculiarly human ? 

(2.) Tlie Factors of the Human Mind — 
Power, Wisdom, Goodness. — Physiologists, 
in general, have given us the factors of life — 
seven or more mysterious and wonderful 
actions. Let us turn to the metaphysicians 
for the factors of the human mind, which are 
to be compared with the factors of Life. 

Almost all metaphysicians have recognised, 
under some terms or another, three very 

L 5 



226 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 2. 

marked and separate, but connected, like- 
nesses of all human minds, which I submit, 
therefore, by general consent of metaphy- 
sicians, may be called, and are, the three 
factors of the human Mind considered as one 
mental being — viz., 

Sense, Feelings, Emotion. 

Understanding, or Perceptions, or Intellect. 
Reason, Sentiments, Will. 

I prefer the three last words to express my 
thought of the human mind in its totality ; 
viz., animal, intelligent, and moral powers, 
animal Emotions, intellectual Judgments, and 
the moral human Will. Man's mind has not 
parts ; it is not made of these three parts, as 
if they were separable and distinct. Emotion 
is a mind, Intellect is a mind, Will is a mind, 
but yet they are not three minds, wholly 
distinct in the human body, but one mind — 
the Mind of a man. 

In one man the emotional mind is too 
strong and in excess: he is the passionate 
man, whose intelligence and moral sentiments 
do not restrain his emotions, his violent pas- 
sions, his animal propensities. In another 



C. viil, § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 227 

man the intelligence is in excess : he is the 
clever, intelligent, cold, hard, immoral, and 
unfeeling, selfish individual ; intelligence, un- 
checked by animal feelings and affections, and 
unguided by moral sentiments ; the very in- 
carnation of a demon upon earth ! Thirdly, 
there is the sentimental man, full of fine moral 
thoughts and sentiments, without strong emo- 
tions or great intelligence, and incapable of 
action either for good or evil; wilful, but 
weak, fickle, and falling; the slave of some 
stronger human will, and possibly atoning by 
some affections and by remorse, by a broken 
heart and worldly wretchedness, for its defects 
of intellectual wisdom and of moral Will. 

Here, however, is the broken image ma 
has to contemplate within himself. Emotions 
give general human power! Intellect gives 
general human wisdom ; and Will gives general 
human goodness, or ought to do so. We thus 
behold limited powers to act, limited wisdom 
to see, and limited goodness to direct ; but, 
alas! how defiled, and how defaced, how 
misery-worn is the coin which bears so plainly 
written on it, this image and superscription — 



228 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vm.,§2. 

Power, Wisdom, and Goodness. Are they 
not abused and misdirected, and in every 
man that breathes, at some time or another, 
wholly degraded and lost ? 

Let us adopt the words of an author from 
whom we have so often differed, and from 
whose published opinions on human society 
we differ even more widely, if possible, than 
we have differed from him on philosophy; 
let us take the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, 
and, for once, acknowledge their truth, and 
thank him for the description of the fallen 
human Mind. " Throughout the rest of crea- 
tion we find the seed and the embryo attain- 
ing to perfect maturity without external aid. 
Drop an acorn into the ground and it will 
in due time become a healthy oak, without 
either pruning or training. The insect passes 
through its several transformations unhelped, 
and arrives at its final form possessed of every 
needful capacity and instinct. No coercion is 
needed to make the young bird or quadruped 
adopt the habits proper to its future life. Its 
character, like its body, spontaneously assumes 
complete fitness for the part it has to play in 



C. viii., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 229 

the world. How happens it that the human 
mind alone tends to develop itself wrongly ? 
Must there not be some exceptional cause for 
this ? Manifestly !" l Manifestly, indeed, there 
must be a cause for what Mr. Spencer justly 
calls " this anomaly in nature." Mr. Spencer 
advocates social equality, and no property in 
land, as remedies for this anomaly in nature ! 
Homo homini lupus, says the motto 
assumed by an ancient Saxon family, who 
saved their lands in the days of Norman Wil- 
liam, and who still live on the naturally 
secluded spot they then occupied. The hills 
are cleared, the marsh is drained, the river is 
bridged, and the moat filled up, and the 
u Social Statics" of English liberty, founded 
on Christianity, has saved a single family for 
800 years and more, proprietors of the same 
spot of ground. But glance back, not for 
800, but for six thousand years, during which, 
man, unlike all other animals, has shown no 
more mercy on his kind, no more mercy than a 
wolf on its prey. Is it possible, after all, 
that the story of Moses is true, and that, of 

1 " Social Statics," p. 187. 



230 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.viii.,§2. 

the two first children of the first woman, the 
elder slew the younger ? Verily, on that fatal 
evening the family of mankind assembled to a 
bitter supper, and the first man may well 
have wept like a woman on the neck of the 
only son that remained to him. How is it 
that the Hebrew story, " the Hebrew myth," 
as Mr. Spencer calls it, still seems to speak 
to man's heart in words that cannot be ex- 
plained away. Are these really living words ? 
Is it possible, moreover, that the first murder 
was committed in assertion of equality, and 
because of religious hate? "And the Lord 
had respect unto Abel and his offering ; but 
unto Cain and to his offering He had not 
respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his 
countenance fell, and the Lord said unto Cain, 
Why art thou wroth, and why is thy counte- 
nance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou 
not be accepted ? and if thou doest not well, 
sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be 
his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." 

But the Lord had more respect unto Abel 
and his offering. Did the God of Heaven 
violate equality, or did He violate Justice? 



C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 231 

Yet every good gift, and every perfect gift 
is from above, and cometh down from the 
Father of Lights, " with whom is no varia- 
bleness, nor shadow of turning," says the 
Apostle who said also, " if any man offend 
not in wordy the same is a perfect man," 
It is, however, clear, that according to this 
story, the free will and sense of equality in 
Cain's mind was offended, that even God 
Himself, for His own purposes, should exer- 
cise that free choice which he, Cain, the child 
and the creature of free will, did not approve ! 
Nay, the promise of worldly power over his 
own brother, willingly obedient, was not able 
to restrain him from taking vengeance for his 
offended dignity, on the unoffending cause; 
or from striving to wipe out his inequality 
before God in his brother's blood ! Therefore, 
the passion for equality caused the first reli- 
gious hate, and tbe first murder and the first 
human death, that ever occurred or is re- 
corded in human words ! 

This is an example of the Human Mind, of 
its intellect, emotions, and will. The free 
will of the creature was offended at the free 



232 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vm.,§2. 

will of the Creator ! Thou shalt not prefer 
my brother before me, said the countenance 
of Cain. All men are born free and equal, 
said the first murderer, and God Himself 
shall not violate equality on this earth whilst 
I, the child of free will, have a right hand 
to avenge the wrong to the principles of 
equality, done in my person, by seeing my 
brother preferred before me, or his offering 
more highly respected than mine, even by Him 
who made us both ! The promise of worldly 
power over the humble and submissive, will 
not restrain the pride and anger of selfish 
equality at seeing the humble preferred by 
God. Jealous equality, therefore, produced 
the first passionate emotion of the human 
mind, and is responsible for the first murder 
ever recorded in human words. Is this, in 
any way, like Animal Life or Nervous Action ? 
In truth, however, the Mind, the free will 
of man is a chaos until he can turn like a 
little child to its parent, and submit himself 
in all childish truth and simplicity to his 
father and his God, with his intellect con- 
vinced, that He alone can teach him true 



C. viil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 233 

wisdom ; with his heart broken with penitence, 
and his free will subdued and, like a child's, 
anxious and willing to be enlightened. Then, 
and only then, will the words of Holy Writ 
strike on his mind, as in every syllable the 
best adapted that wisdom could devise to 
help to restore in man the noble image of 
GOODNESS that sin had defaced. Oh! teachers 
of that absolute religion, which is absolute 
nonsense, the FEAR of God is the beginning 
of wisdom, and without that fear we cannot 
learn to LOVE. But it is the Spirit that 
quickeneth the human mind, and the very 
words of Jesus, they are spirit, and they are 
life. " No man can come unto Me, except 
the Father draw him," said Jesus; but is 
He not the Father, and will He not draw 
all those who ask for that Spirit, in sincerity 
and in truth, as the same Jesus declared? 
The Spirit may be life in the mind ; but the 
life in the nerves is not mind, but the instru- 
ment of such mind as the animal is endowed 
with. 

Just analogy, therefore, and the highest 
reason, but not any law of vegetable or animal 



234 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C. viil, § 2. 

growth, may well lead a man's thoughts up- 
wards, by observation of life in the thing, to 
truer thoughts of life in the mind, and from 
free will in the person, to thoughts of a re- 
newed life in the broken image of the Power, 
Wisdom, and Goodness of God, which we can 
discern within our own minds ! 

" Nature, as well as Scripture, tells me, 
' that I am the image of God.' He that 
understands not thus much, has not got his 
first lesson, and has yet to begin the alphabet 
of man." 1 The mysteries of the life of the 
body may well teach us by analogy the still 
greater mysteries of the life of the mind. 
The proper life of the body may lead us 
upwards to the living unity of emotion, intel- 
lect, and free will, returning, in the Spirit, to 
its One Redeemer and Father, instructed, 
redeemed, and sanctified ; active, enlightened, 
and living, because thoroughly humbled, and 
converted from the error of its way ; and 
now once more receiving the free gift of 
eternal life, a spiritual life within. Thus only 
does mind become life or life-like. The 
1 Browns "Relig. Med." 



C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 235 

attempt to identify life and mind, except by 
this constantly used analogy of Scripture, 
confounds body and mind ; confounds the life 
of the body which comes from within and 
below, and the life of the mind, which must 
come from without and from above. 

No man knoweth the things of a man, save 
the spirit of man that is in him. The spirit 
of man is the life of the mind, and if that 
spirit be not the Spirit of God from above, it 
will most assuredly be the Spirit of Evil from 
below. There is a Life of the Body and a 
life of the Mind, but who can suppose them 
in any wise the same ? 

One thing, however, seems quite clear from 
this example ; that to attempt to discuss the 
identity of such deep abstract thoughts as life 
and mind, by means of such definitions as the 
" the adjustment of external and internal re- 
lations," is a most inadequate method of pre- x 
senting to the mind the true meanings of such 
abstract words. This, which is Mr. Spencer's 
definition of life, is also absurd — for the 
word add-just-ment assumes, in fact, or may 
be made to assume, the very mental question 



236 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C. viil, § 2. 

in dispute ; but the truth seems to be, as he 
also seems to admit, that the adjustment of 
life is the adjustment effected by God and 
perfect ; and that the adjustment of mind is 
the adjustment of man the broken image of 
his Maker, and not only imperfect, but alto- 
gether u an anomaly in nature," which Mr. 
Spencer himself very properly calls man, or the 
mind of man. This imperfect or fallen human 
mind cannot, therefore, possibly have grown, 
on his own showing, out of the perfection of 
animal life, unless perfection do breed imper- 
fection. That fall from perfection, which 
Holy Scripture has revealed to man, may 
require to be explained, but the admission of 
it negatives the identity of life and mind. 
The life of the body is quite different from 
the living spirit of the human mind, though 
both co-exist in mysterious unity in every 
man that breathes. Our object, of course, is 
not to discuss this great question in a few 
pages, but to give an illustration of an im- 
proved method of defining the terms to be 
compared, viz., Life and Mind. 

We submit, therefore, by this example, that 



C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 237 

the old Greek system of definition by Genus 
and essential difference, and by selecting such 
terms, as may be put into an ordinary gram- 
matical sentence, is utterly inadequate to 
express what all well-informed men, modern 
physiologists, and modern metaphysicians, 
mean and understand by such abstract terms 
as life and mind, 

We must dig deeper and go to the roots 
and factors of our knowledge, to the inde- 
composable terms, organisation, absorption, 
secretion, reproduction, &c, before we have 
any semblance of a definition of what is 
really meant, amongst moderns, by the words, 
life and living things. We must discuss and 
understand what is meant by human Emo- 
tions, Intelligence, Sentiments or Will, before 
we have any semblance of what is really 
meant amongst us by the words Mind and 
human mental things. 

How can we argue about Mr. Spencer's 
definition, " The continuous adjustment of 
internal to external relations " ? — which might 
mean the Foreign Office under Lord John 
Russell — or indeed about any other of the 



238 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 2. 

grammatical definitions which have been given 
for life, such as Coleridge's "Tendency to 
Individuation," or Cuvier's "Vortex," or 
Dr. WhewelPs "Constant Form of Circu- 
lating Matter." We lose, in such definitions, 
the whole force of the thoughts of all the 
living motions and actions discovered by Phy- 
siologists, and comprehended under our word 
Life. 

When, however, we reach the material and 
fundamental factors of Life, the likenesses 
of living things taught us by physiology, the 
organization, the absorption, the assimila- 
tion, the secretions, and the rest, we can, 
to some extent, compare the absorption of 
a living body with the so called absorption 
of a living mind, and so on. Are the ab- 
sorptions of a living body and of a living 
mind the same ? Then we perceive that the 
supposed likeness is not identity, but the 
mere analogy of human language, rising to 
and teaching the higher by means of the 
lower ; and our conviction becomes confirmed 
that body and mind are not the same, thai 
the higher human mind has no kind of iden- 



C. vin., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 239 

tity with the principle of natural life in the 
living matter of a bodily being. Body has a 
life and mind has a life, but the two lives are 
not in any way the same or identical, or con- 
nected by growth. The analogy is a verbal 
likeness, not an identical sameness, a likeness 
of which we need not be afraid ; seeing that 
we have the highest authority for its use ; 
" the Life is more than meat — I am the bread 
of Life — the words that I speak unto you 
they are Life" the Life of the Mind. 

Some of the same materialistic philoso- 
phers who seek to confound life and mind, 
also lose themselves in the confusion of cause 
and law; a confusion of much older date, 
and for which we might go back to the phi- 
losophy of Greece. 

Let us also shortly glance at this old 
question of the world being a machine — a 
concourse of atoms, which wound themselves 
up at the first, and have ever since been 
running down or up, some might say, accord- 
ing to law, with no active, living Governor 
whatever, no MIND perpetually present ! 



240 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 1. 



CHAPTER IX. 

LAW AND CAUSE. 

( 1 .) The Cause, Plurality of Causes, no Cause 
at all.— The mind of man, as I have said, is a 
trinity in unity, a product of three factors — 
Emotion, Intellect, and Will; an emotional 
mind and an intellectual mind, shared to 
some extent with the lower animals. But, 
alas ! the noble free will, the holy mind or 
human self-governor, is defiled and debased, 
an anomaly in nature. Emotions represent 
Power ; intellect, Wisdom ; and will, Good- 
ness. 

This degraded free will of Man, dead while 
it seems to live, is itself the product of a' 
number of distinct faculties, when we think 



C. ix., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 241 

of it as the reason ; that higher reason which 
places man above the rest of the animal crea- 
tion. The human will has also, at least, three 
factors — love, veneration, and justice. Man's 
will is a chaos, which requires the moving of 
the Spirit of God on its tempestuous waters 
to restore or redeem it, and to reduce it to 
light, order, and truthfulness. 

I am not writing a treatise on metaphysics 
or on the human mind, but am desirous of 
showing the way to the first step in Philoso- 
sophic truth — the only way, as I conceive, in 
which men can come to some proper scientific 
convention about the words they use, in order 
to arrive at some scientific certainty on phi- 
losophical subjects. 

The attempt to confound law and cause is 
certainly one of the most curious attempts 
contained in all the history of the fallen mind 
of man, to ignore his Creator, and to hide 
the nakedness of his rebellion under a con- 
fusion of words. 

Here, as in all languages and amongst all 
men, a falsity never shows its face. It wraps 
itself up in a " wrap rascal" parcel of words, 

M 



242 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 1. 

as Coleridge says — looking both ways at once, 
hiding its confusion and contradiction in the 
folds of the cloak. Let us examine this 
cloak ! " The uniformity in the succession 
of events otherwise called the Law of Cau- 
sation." 1 Or take the following : " Causation, 
in our view of it, not being fundamentally 
different from order in time." 2 Such ex- 
pressions, we say, afford a cloak of words, out 
of which, in due time, to develop what Mr. 
Mill calls " the Fundamental error of Bacon," 
viz., " overlooking Plurality of Causes " for 
" one phenomenon ; " " so contrary," he says, 
" to all we now know of nature " ! Until at 
last, we actually are told, that " The pheno- 
menon of which he [Bacon] sought for the 
one catcse, has oftenest no cause at all! And 
when it has, depends, as far as hithertQ 
ascertained, on an unassignable variety of 
distinct causes ! " 3 

Here, then, is the conclusion — an actual 
phenomenon j with a plurality of causes or no 

1 "Logic," vol. ii., p. 104, 

2 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 133. 

3 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 318. 



C.ix., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 243 

cause at all! or a variety of distinct causes, 
which you please ! 

Now, a plurality of causes may mean what 
I should call a compound cause, but a variety 
of distinct causes must mean variable causes 
for the same effect. But a phenomenon with 
no cause at all! That indeed must be a phe- 
nomenon worthy of philosophic examination, 
by a philosopher who sets out by saying that 
words in his work shall always be spoken of 
as u the names of things themselves." " A 
thing itself," called a phenomenon, produced 
by no cause at all ! 

One's first feeling, on collating these words 
of Mr. Mill, is to laugh at the absurdity of 
the farce ; the second feeling is to grieve at 
the tragedy of a noble intellect confused and 
bewildered by its own words on the most im- 
portant subject that can engage the attention 
of a rational being ! 

If " Order in Time be not fundamentally 
different from Causation," then the phenome- 
non with no cause must have been before 
time began, and not in the days of Bacon ! If 
it had no cause at all, it was the First Cause 

M 2 



244 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., § 1. 

itself ! But it is idle to discuss the possible 
meanings of Mr. Mill's words, which are 
evidently absurd, and in themselves self- 
contradictory. If things have even an order 
in time, they cannot be in disorder; if a 
thing was a phenomenon in the days of 
Bacon, it cannot have been without an ante- 
cedent in order of time, or without a cause 
at all ! on Mr. Mill's own view of causation. 
In short, a uniformity without uniformity is 
a simple absurdity or self-contradiction. 

It is evident, upon the face of Mr. Mill's 
own words, that " order in time," "cause" 
and " law," have " no signification," no fixed 
meaning whatever, in Mr. Mill's mind or 
intellect, if we can judge of that mind and 
intellect by the words he uses. He can think 
a law no law ; a cause no cause ; a uniformity 
not uniform; and a consequent sometimes 
with, and sometimes without, an antecedent ! 

His mind seems a chaos on the subject of 
causation, utterly confused and self-contra- 
dictory. But Mr. Mill seems, to me, entitled 
to the credit of more candidly disclosing his 
confusion than some other writers, if he will 



C.ix.,§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 245 

excuse a compliment to his conscience, at the 
expense of his verbal 1 understanding. 

1 While correcting this sheet, the Westminster Review for 
April, 1861, has come to hand, and the first article, that on 
Mr. Kingsley 's "Essay on History," affords a good illus- 
tration of the utter confusion of thought, the no-meaning 
of "advanced thinkers" on the subject of Law. The 
reviewer has no meaning whatever for the word Law, but 
always connotes to Law the various subjects on which laws 
are known. " Thus," he says, " who does not see that the 
Law of Gravitation and the Law of the Decalogue are ideas 
which have little more in common than the sound of an 
organ and the sound of a codfish ? " — evidently connoting 
the ideas of Gravitation and of the Decalogue to the word 
Law. And so throughout the article he pretends to answer 
Mr. Kingsley, by telling him that " Law is not Cause ; " 
and then quotes Mr. Mill's definition of Causation, which 
actually confounds Cause with Law — viz., the simplest of 
all laws — i.e., Antecedent and Consequent, or order in 
Time, " otherwise called the Law of Causation" ! 

Law is the product of Word and Order, and aU laws are 
orderly words laid down by lawyers and lawgivers ; and so, 
the Laws of Gravitation are orderly words from the writings 
of Newton ; the Laws of the Decalogue are orderly words 
from the writings of Moses ; the Laws of Population are 
orderly words from writers on Population, &c. The 
question between Mr. Kingsley, whose essay I have not 
read, and the Reviewer, seems to be whether laws of human 
history are to be found in the laws of mind or the laws of 
matter. Mr. Buckle, and self-dubbed " advanced thinkers" 
in general, or modern materialists, as I understand them, 
contend for the latter, and Mr. Kingsley, apparently, con- 
tends for the former, insisting on not confounding persons 
and things. Mr. Buckle thinks, or rather says, speaking 
from my memory of his work, that physical facts are the 
causes of human history; whereas I would contend that 
human minds are the causes of human history and that 



246 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§2. 

Let us, if we can, try and clear up a little 
this very ancient attempt to confound two such 
clear and distinct thoughts as law and cause, 
and to reduce the universe to a machine or a 
concourse of atoms, to a Law without a super- 
intending Cause. 

(2.) A Cause at Law and in Nature. — 
Let us take the lawyer's use of the words, 
Law and Cause, and examine it in the first 
place. 

A cause at law is an action between a 
plaintiff and defendant. The plaintiff comes 
first and the defendant comes after ; and when 
they, the parties, are both present together, 
there is a legal hubbub — in short, a few 
WORDS between them ; and the cause comes 
into court before a judge, an admitted pos- 
sessor of a certain amount of power, wisdom, 
and goodness. The judge applies or lays 
down the law in words, and the hurlyburly of 
the cause is at an end ; the plaintiff and de- 
fendant sink into their new positions in peace, 

physical facts are not the causes, but the limits or restric- 
tions upon human powers — i.e., upon the human mind, 
very important to know, but not Causes Limits. 



C. ix , § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 247 

and the law-cause is at an end, and has be- 
come, in lawyer phrase, a law-case, laid by 
for future reference. Just as we put a book in 
our book-case, good and bad ; so we put our 
law cases registered altogether till we want 
them. Therefore, we have a law cause, the 
product of Parties x Action x (power, wis- 
dom, and goodness) ending in a law case. 
But we have seen, ante, p. 228, that mind is a 
product of power, wisdom, and goodness, in 
greater or less development. Therefore, a 
cause equals or is the product of Parties x 
Action x Mind ; and the thing produced is 
a case of law or law case. Thus the lawyers, 
at all events, mean by cause, a thing com- 
posed of parties, action, and mind, pro- 
ducing an effect or new arrangement of things 
and parties, called a law point or law case. 
The cause ends in a case ; the U in the word, 
the hubbub, or mutual action of the parties, 
having been settled and excluded by the 
Power of the judge. 

Now, I say that, not only all lawyers, but 
all Englishmen commonly use the word Cause 
in this manner, viz., as a confused action of 



248 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.tx.,§2. 

parties settled by the Power of Mind. Suppose, 
therefore, that in place of bringing into court 
a plaintiff and defendant, two persons, we 
brought into court an acid and an alkali, two 
things, or an electric current and some water, 
in short, any active things, or things in acti- 
vity; and a hubbub follows between them, 
action and reaction, ending in a neutral salt in 
the first case, and two gases in the other, or 
some other effect or consequence of the action 
in every case. Well ! the cause begins, pro- 
ceeds, and ends ; and in place of an acid and 
an alkali, we have a neutral salt, or, in place 
of water, we have two gases, or at the end 
of the action and reaction we have some other 
consequence ; we have, in short, in every case, 
a case of chemical law. We thus have two 
or more law points, or law cases in chemistry. 
Well, then ! is the difference very startling, 
or, in truth, is there any difference whatever 
to our human apprehension between the Law- 
yers' and the Chemists' use of the word Cause? 
Two or more things or particles, not minds or 
persons, come, or are put together, and there 
ensues a hubbub or hurlyburly between them, 



C.ix.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 249 

which we do not in the least understand, but 
which we call a cause, or antecedent, and it 
ends in an effect or consequent, a case of 
natural law. And the chemist or natural phi- 
losopher endeavours to pick out the law of the 
chemistry case, just as a lawyer in his chambers 
endeavours to get at the law of his law case. 
In the one case we have persons in action, in 
the other case we have things in activity. 
This is the plain unsophisticated truth, and 
every Englishman so speaks, and verbally 
admits it, when he uses the word Cause. 

Now, I have certainly yet to learn, why we 
Englishmen are to use the word cause in any 
other sense, in the courts of natural philo- 
sophy, than we do in the courts of our 
country ; or why we are to leave the power, 
wisdom, and goodness of the judge out of 
court in the one case and not in the other. 

For my part, I will not leave it out till 
some sufficient reason be given; and, there- 
fore, in the cause between the acid and the 
alkali, or electricity and water, or any other 
cause in natural philosophy, I refer the conse- 
quent, the neutral salt, or the two gases, to 

M 5 



250 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §2. 

the due and proper application of Power or 
mind by the Supreme Omnipotent Judge, by 
Himself or His agents, universally present in 
Court; just as I refer the final arrangement 
between plaintiff and defendant at West- 
minster to the application of power or mind 
by the judges there, and endeavour, by 
searching and examining all the circum- 
stances from the beginning of the cause to 
the end of it, to find out the law which the 
authorities must reasonably have intended to 
lay down. 

I cannot refer to the judge himself in the 
one case or the other ; but I can if I choose, 
in both cases, start a new and similar cause, 
or try to do so in order to hear a new and 
more lucid judgment if possible. 

The advantage which natural philosophy 
has over the practice of the law is, that you 
are more sure of not receiving different answers 
to the same question in the one case than in 
the other ; but how Cause can be confounded 
with Law, or how an antecedent or former 
state of things can be confounded with the 
law or dead rule according to which the living 



C. ix., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 251 

power, wisdom, or goodness of the judge, pro- 
duces a new state of the same things; or how 
Cause can be confounded with Succession in 
Time, appears to me a most surprising abuse 
of words. 

Cause is, parties, action, Mind. 

Effect is, parties, new arrangement. 

And Law is the verbal expression or rule 
which the judge lays down, or which the 
lawyer or the looker-on adopts in order to 
express the change which has taken place, 
devised by his judgment from the facts of 
the whole cause, carefully examined from the 
beginning to the end. Law is words in order. 

Lawyers misinterpret cases, and so do 
natural philosophers. It is often needful at 
law to go and search the records of an old 
cause to find who all the parties were, and 
whether there were not some other parties 
than those mentioned in the reports, in order 
to account for the strange conclusion. But it 
would be a most surprising effort of reason, 
we came to the conclusion that the judge had 
left the court, and that the judgment pro- 
ceeded without him, and that the cause was 



252 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§2. 

settled by the parties ending their difference 
according to the clock at Westminster, that 
is to say, by order in time, or tossing up 
which should go first, and which last, or 
ending in " a phenomenon with no cause at 
all !" A consequent without an antecedent ! 

We say, therefore, that in the courts of 
nature the Judge is always present whenever 
a cause ends in a case of natural law. And 
we say that a law of nature is merely our 
words to try and explain to ourselves the 
reason of the cause ending in an effect or 
case of the law. When we are puzzled, we 
try, if possible, to put the parties ox particles 
to the question, as Bacon recommended. We 
take them separately, and, if possible, crucify 
them till they tell us their whole history, and 
how they came, and what they would do in 
other circumstances, and whether they are 
single or double, and so forth, and turn them 
round and round, and backwards and for- 
wards, and inside out, if possible, both while 
the cause proceeds, and before it begins, and 
after it ends, and we register every answer 
they give us ; and, without doubt, the Great, 



C.ix., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 253 

and All-powerful, and All-wise, and All good 
Judge in the Courts of Nature, approves of 
man's searching disposition. He says, "My 
son, get wisdom !" 

External nature was intended to rouse our 
sluggish spirit, to elevate us from the plea- 
sures of sense to the pleasures of intellect, 
and from the pleasures of intellect to the 
glories of that Divine goodness which is dimly 
shadowed in the best feelings of mankind. But 
what possible excuse is there for any man who 
admits the existence of an Omnipotent God, to 
hide this plain state of the case with " order 
in time," and " the uniformity of the succes- 
sion of events ;" and, as it were, to use the 
very goodness, and clearness, and certainty of 
God's law, as a reason for turning the judge 
out of his own court, in the decision of the 
cause between his own subjects, his own crea- 
tions, his own particles of matter ? 

Now, how is this absurdity attempted to be 
supported? first by shuffling cause; which does 
of necessity, according to all English usage, 
imply compound parties, and some action be- 
tween them, into a single antecedent ; and se- 



254 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§2. 

condly, by shuffling the new state of the par- 
ties when the cause is concluded, also into a 
single consequent ; , and calling this new state 
of parties, the effect of the first state ; just as 
if this new arrangement was effected without 
any mental power or interference whatever, 
as if arrangement? were made by blind par- 
ticles of wo/i-thinking things of their own 
accord, and according to the most beautiful, 
sublime, and subtle laws that man can conceive 
in his loftiest mind, and express in intelligible 
words and symbols ! 

However, if materialistic philosophers choose 
to use the word Cause in a manner different 
from all Englishmen, who understand by 
cause, an action between two or more per- 
sons, and thence by analogy, transfer it to 
action and reaction between two or more 
external things or particles, and consider 
cause as an action between two or more 
things ending, in both cases, in some new 
arrangement of persons or things, by the fiat 
of a powerful, wise, or good Judge, they are 
bound to give us some clear and intelligible 
new meaning for the old w T ord cause. What 



C.ix.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 255 

produces the thought of cause in their mind ? 
in short, if it be not as I say, the product of 
parties, action, mind, ending in a new 
arrangement of the parties, the persons, or 
things, called the law Gase ; either the muni- 
cipal law case, or the natural law case, or the 
moral law case : what do they mean ? Can 
these philosophers give us any meaning without 
being self-contradictory as above, like Mr. 
Mill? and can they avoid talking of a conse- 
quent which had no antecedent, i.e., " a phe- 
nomenon with no cause at all," or of " order 
in time," with no order at all, i.e., a variety of 
distinct causes for the same effect. We are not 
bound to give up our plain English words for 
self-contradictory trash of that kind, even on 
the authority of such a great logician and 
philosopher as Mr. Mill. 

(3.) The Infra Dig. Argument. — But the 
most amusing excuse of some of these philo- 
sophers who propose to turn the Great Judge 
of the Universe out of his own natural court, 
and to make causes between things decide 
themselves by order in time, or the clock at 
Greenwich Observatory, and without His pre- 



256 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., §3. 

sence, and action, and power, is what may- 
be called the infra dig. argument. It is, in 
short, beneath His importance; it is infra 
dig. for the Great Judge to be called in to 
decide a question between an acid and an 
alkali, or two atoms of matter. In short, 
let us speak it with reverence, He must 
be too busy to attend to such a multiplicity of 
trifles as we from habit think the wondrous laws 
and operations of nature in the meanest par- 
ticles of matter. What a wretched shuffle 
this is, to try and hide God's particular pro- 
vidence, His omnipresence, and omniscience ; 
and in thought to try and exclude Him from 
this wondrous universe which He has created, 
and now sustains at every moment in every 
particle. In short, this confusion of Cause 
and Law seems a mere opinion, founded on 
a personal dislike to the thought of God's 
particular providence, to God's omniscience, 
and to His omnipresence. Weak and wicked 
man strives to thicken the vail that sepa- 
rates him from his Maker, and would rather 
think of this universe as a great clock wound 
up by a watchmaker, and then mankind and 



C.ix.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 257 

all left to work itself down, free from all 
responsibility to any Being; but, of course, 
leaving the original maker of the watch 
responsible for all irregularities ? That seems 
the whole secret, and the whole reason that 
exists for confounding law and cause. Phi- 
losophers not only dislike to acknowledge 
the free will of man, and his fall, and just 
punishment, but would, if possible, conceal 
from themselves God's omnipresence and om- 
niscience, His Divine particular Providence 
operating in the meanest particles of matter. 
However, we shall continue to hold, both 
in the laws of nature and in the laws of man, 
that Cause is the product of parties, action, 
and Mind ; and that Law is the verbal rule or 
order laid down, the product of words and 
order, which brings, verbally, the old state 
of parties into the new arrangement. There 
are very many causes in nature of which we 
are ignorant ; but our business is to search 
for the first or antecedent arrangement of 
the parties or things concerned, and thence 
to find some verbal rule which will reduce 
them to the new or consequent arrangement. 



258 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§4. 

The order and the uniformity are a part of 
the law, that is of our verbal expression of it, 
and not any part of the cause, or of the 
effect. But all our discoveries are still only 
human words. Our verbal expression of the 
law must, of course, be orderly and uniform, 
or it is no laiv at all; i.e., not by us laid 
down properly for an intelligent creature to 
understand. As soon, however, as the Judge 
is admitted to be always in court, and nothing 
too mean for His attention, all other difficul- 
ties will vanish from the devout and conscien- 
tious mind, and he will seek the laws of 
nature with that faithful humility and rever- 
ence which are most fitted to enable us to 
discover what is both true and useful. 

(4.) Pantheistical Objections. — But some 
poor bewildered mortal may possibly exclaim, 
Why this is Pantheism! Is God in every 
particle of matter, and in every action and 
reaction that takes place between every two 
or more petty particles? To which I answer 
—Is the Judge at Westminster in the parties 
to the cause, or mixed up with their squabbles, 
which he settles and determines ? No ! Well, 



C.ix.,§4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 259 

then, why are we to suppose any such folly 
in a natural cause, or a natural action ? The 
power, and wisdom, and goodness of the 
Judge are not in the particles of matter, but 
everywhere, operating and enforcing good, 
wise and powerful laws, and only just as long- 
as He thinks fit ; but the Judge Himself is 
Mind, not matter, nor in any matter. Pan- 
theism is as absurd, and as self-contradictory 
as Pan -Atheism. This is only, as we have so 
often said, the constant old shift or shuffle be- 
tween the folly of materialism and the folly 
of dogmatic idealism. When driven from 
one refuge, the defeated philosopher flies to 
another equally absurd. 

Thus, however, we are not obliged to use 
the word cause in two senses, or in none at 
all. The analogy between persons and things, 
between parties and parts, between minds and 
bodies, is perfect throughout, but they cannot 
be confounded. If the devout mind will but 
always remember, who the Great Judge, by 
whose laws, discovered and laid down by man 
in human words, all causes between material 
things and their parts and particles, are 



260 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§5. 

settled, he will be in the best frame of mind 
to discover the truest verbal expression for 
those laws, after he has carefully examined a 
cause or case of natural law. But if you per- 
sist, like a child, in asking for some verbal 
expression for what you and I cannot under- 
stand, I can but fall back on the verbal 
expression revealed to Moses in the infancy of 
man's moral education, and say, that the 
Spirit of God moves on the face of the earth, 
and is ever ready to enter the chaos of human 
free will, and to say, let there be light, to 
the humble and penitent searcher for the 
light of Truth. "If ye, then, being evil, know 
how to give good gifts unto your children ; 
how much more shall your Heavenly Father 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." 
(5.) Fundamental Differences and Mr. 
Mill. — " I have no toleration for false words, 
and don't wish to have any." If I think them 
evil malefactors, I desire to crucify them 
with the truth. It is such words as " strictly 
speaking," "not fundamentally different," &c, 
which suffice to baffle an intellect even as 
powerful as that of Mr. Mill ! What can a 



C.ix.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 261 

logician mean by such trash? What is 
Mr. Mill's notion of a fundament ? and what 
amounts to a difference? Is a fundamental 
difference the same as a differential funda- 
ment ? How can men speak such folly, and 
make it applicable even to the First Cause ; 
that first Emotion or active Cause in the Divine 
Mind that we assume to have produced all 
things ? " Order in time is not fundamentally 
different from causation !" Why, this admits 
a difference, and says it is not fundamental. 
Does fundamental mean to found-a-mental- 
thing-upon, or find a mental thing for? Well, 
if he cannot found a mental thing upon the 
difference, and yet admits there is a difference, 
he should admit his ignorance, and not call 
two different things by the same name. " The 
succession of events," otherwise called the law 
of causation ! Night the cause of day, day the 
cause of night ! Every first the cause of every 
second ! and every second the cause of every 
third ! and so on ; any amount of absurdity 
rather than confess ignorance, and become 
humble. Now, is it that Mr. Mill cannot 
found, or cannot find, a mental thing ; and 



262 PHILOSOPHY; OR, . [C.ix.,§5. 

not being able to find or found, thinks him- 
self entitled to confound order in time with 
cause, though he knows and admits that he 
knows them to be different? When he next 
undertakes to enlighten the world about such 
things as causes and general words, I trust 
he will have found a Mind, a fundamental 
thing in every cause; and general words, 
which, strictly speaking, always have some 
signification, and will be able to use them to 
better purpose than to manufacture language 
calculated to mislead men of weaker intellect 
than himself, and to exclude the Creator 
from the Universe He has made. 1 

1 Here I take my leave of Mr. Mill and his Logic, and would 
do so with respect and esteem if it were only for his Essay on 
Liberty, and its affecting preface. I trust that the memory 
of the love of the creature may lead his mind more and more 
upward to the love of the Creator, whose laws and whose 
truth have, in my opinion, been outraged by the words in 
this Chapter remarked upon. On some other occasion I 
may, perhaps, consider his political parallel between the 
death of Socrates and the death of Jesus ! But when he has 
more carefully considered the true signification of words, I 
trust that he may be more ready to admit that the truth of 
a moral revelation in words is not only a thing possible, but 
a thing actual ; that he may feel morally the deep truth and 
wisdom of that Holy Book which makes the pure love of man 
for woman the highest type of the love of God for man, his 
friend : and that a book that pretended to be a revelation 



C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 263 

(6.) Works and Words — Efficient and 
Formal Causes. — We thus have discussed 
shortly law and cause, by reducing these 
words to their factors ; and hope that if any 
reader, who in times past, has found his mind 
in any-wise bewildered between formal causes , 
and efficient causes, and moral causes and final 
causes, will candidly read over and consider 
the verbal solution which we have given, he 
will discover that it is a pathway clear and 
distinct across the weary wilderness of words, 
through which even great philosophers have 
vainly endeavoured to pass, in the settlement 
of this question ; and that he will acknowledge 
that our explanation is one which can be ren- 
dered throughout perfectly clear and intelli- 
gible. Of course it depends on our assumption 
that the word Cause is a product of parties, 
action, judge; or in external nature, things, 
action, Mind, L e., the mind of God, whenever 

from God, and which did not openly declare that which to 
man's mind can only be represented as God's absolute free 
will, or, as we must say, in reference to man's ignorant 
mind, " God's caprice,'" i.e., His right to act in a way unin- 
telligible to man's highest reason, would have carried on its 
face a clear and manifest proof that such a revelation did 
not come from the Infinite Author of this Universe. 



264 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., §6. 

we refer to external nature, subject to Him. 
It of course assumes that there is only one 
meaning for the word cause, and it adheres 
to that meaning throughout, and shows that 
in his most ordinary language man still con- 
fesses the Maker whom he sometimes wishes 
to deny. When the things become mental 
things, i. e., human persons, and the action 
becomes human words, and the mind becomes 
a judge at Westminster, we have a cause at 
Westminster; but when the things are ex- 
ternal bodies or particles, and the action not 
the words of persons but the works of par-* 
tides, and the mind becomes the Creator of 
the universe, then the cause becomes a cause 
in Nature. 

But, on the one hand, to confound the mind 
of the universe with the work of particles of 
matter, is, we say, mere superstition and 
idolatry ; and, on the other, to deny His pre- 
sence in every natural cause, in every action 
of every particle of matter, is to deny His 
omnipresence, omniscience, and power. There 
is not a hair of our heads that is not num- 
bered. There is not a sparrow falls to the 



C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 265 

ground but by His will ; not one of them is 
" forgotten before God." There is not a 
particle of matter which works or operates 
but by his express knowledge, permission, 
power, and will. Oh ! that all men would see 
and acknowledge this truth of a Divine par- 
ticular Providence, a truth as far removed 
from superstition and idolatry as it is from 
infidelity and blasphemy ! 

The reader may have perceived that I have, 
in the preceding discussion of law and cause, 
assumed the word action as some indecompo- 
sable thought, sufficiently understood and 
recognised amongst mankind, whether it 
refers to actions of persons or actions of 
things. An action of persons at law is a 
bundle of words of men; an action of ex- 
ternal bodies in natural law is a bundle of 
works of particles or natural things. We 
thus are justly compellable to state the dif- 
ference between works and words. 

" The words that I speak unto you they are 
spirit and they are life," said Jesus. " Though 
ye believe not me, believe the works that I 
do." Or, for example, when Jesus, looking 

N 



266 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§6. 

up to heaven, sighed and said, " Lazarus, 
come forth!" was He saying words or doing 
works ? 

Whatever thy belief may be, reader, thy 
words are thine own alone ; the works of thy 
larynx and thy tongue, or of thy pen worked 
by thy arm ; or of thine eyes and body, moved 
by thy mind and adopted by thy will. Words 
are the works of mind, and works are the 
words of bodies. From our three classes of 
minds, bodies, and words, in order to distin- 
guish the verbal actions of minds we call them 
words ; to mark, as it were, the verbal actions 
of bodies moved by minds other than man's, 
we call them works. Works are therefore 
the actions of bodies, and words are the 
actions of minds ! A word of man is an 
action of man's mind, producing an action of 
his larynx and tongue, or of his arm and pen, 
and adopted and acknowledged by the mind. 
In our original conception of Knowledge 
as the product of mind, things, and words 
{ante, p. 17), " word" was more proper than 
" action," because an action does not become 
the subject of knowledge until it has received 



C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 267 

a name and become a word. When an action 
has received a name, then alone can it form a 
part or factor in human knowledge. Let 
these few sentences suffice to prevent the cavil 
which might otherwise have been raised on 
our use of the word action, to include both 
words and works. 

We are not writing a treatise on the theory 
of growth or development entertained by 
those philosophers who endeavour to confound 
life with mind, and law with cause ; but are 
endeavouring to show how truth and certainty 
are to be better arrived at by means of our 
words, viz., by fixing and agreeing to fix the 
factors which go to produce the abstract 
words we discuss, in place of the old Greek 
logic of a definition. But it is very worthy 
to be remarked, in reference to life and mind, 
and law and cause, that there is a Providence 
which rules man's words, and seems to make 
it impossible to establish error without our 
words becoming themselves self-contradictory, 
and betraying the falsity. Truth is one and 
simple, and so commends itself to the average 
of mankind who enact the laws of language 

N 2 



268 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 6. 

in ordinary matters, that words, in the long 
run, tend to correct themselves by the very 
inconsistencies of that selfish free will from 
which their errors proceed. Men make idols 
of some verbal truth seen in the partial and 
one-sided glass of their own mind, and set it 
up as conclusive against God's truth, which 
includes all that is verbally true in the human 
idol. 

Thus, for example, the same class of phi- 
losophers and moralists who struggle to con- 
found life and mind, and law and cause ; who 
seem to desire to remove the primary Ex- 
istence to an infinite distance from the affairs 
of the world and of man ; who seek to prove 
some " pre-established harmony" of growth, 
whereby the dead matter of a fire mist grew 
into a planet, and into a plant, and into a 
protozoon, and from a protozoon developed 
into the mind of a Socrates or a Plato, ac- 
cording to law, are, for the most part, inclined 
to deny that during the countless ages which 
they assume to have passed since the first 
fiat of the law of nature was enacted, any 



C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 269 

subsequent fiat of law, or, in short, any suc- 
ceeding miracle can ever have occurred. 

But is it not passing strange, nay, contradic- 
tory and absurd, that men, who can believe in, 
and endeavour to establish some law of growth, 
which is able to produce out of an infinitesimal 
germ floating in water, the mind of a Socrates 
and the thinking of a Plato, should believe and 
assert that the same, or some other, law of 
growth could not " possibly" produce, five 
hundred years later, what we Christians term 
the miraculous birth of a Being or a spirit 
superior to man from the womb of a virgin ? 
How utterly self-contradictory and inconsis- 
tent, we say, must be that mind which enter- 
tains as possible this monstrous hypothesis of 
the growth of Socrates out of a lichen or 
protozoon, and holds it as not only possible, 
but in some degree credible and probable; 
and yet, at the same time, turns round and tells 
us, along with the inventors of the " absolute 
religion," and other self-dubbed advanced 
thinkers of the present day, that a " miracle is 
not possible, and involves a contradiction"! 
If law could evolve the mind of a Plato or 



270 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §6. 

Socrates out of a monad or protozoon, even 
with a " rudimentary eye," why should not 
some such law five hundred years later, evolve 
a Jesus, a Spirit, much more powerful, and 
able to teach mankind a still higher life ; and 
to develop in man a still higher mind ? why 
not a Being, a man with a Spirit, as much 
superior to Socrates and his demon, as So- 
crates was superior to a monad or protozoon ? 
why not a Being, able of his own mere Will 
to modify and control all inferior laws of 
dead or living matter, or to suspend them 
altogether, just as the life of any animal sus- 
pends the inferior laws of chemical affinity. 
Is not every life a suspension of the laws of 
mere dead matter ? and why are we to stop 
short with the life of Socrates, and not go 
forward at least in " possibility," to the re- 
corded life of Jesus, and to the Life Eternal 
which he offered and promised ? 

If mind, as these advanced thinkers pre- 
tend, grew out of matter, why may not Spirit 
grow out of mind ? If dead matter grew into 
living matter, and then got up and walked, and 
reasoned as a man which became a Socrates, 



C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 2 71 

why should not living man at a later period 
grow into a Jesus, a Spirit able to raise and 
rising from the dead ? Absurd as most of us 
think the original hypothesis, sure we are, 
that for the same mind to entertain that hypo- 
thesis as possible, and then to deny "the 
possibility" of the miracles of Scripture is a 
self-contradiction still more absurd than the 
hypothesis itself. But the truth is, that these 
advanced thinkers simply confound analogy 
with growth. External nature was, doubt- 
less, intended to lead man upwards, to educate 
him for those higher purposes to which, in 
some future stage of existence his powers 
may be adapted. In my "Father's house 
are many mansions." The universe is wide 
enough to worthily employ the highest facul- 
ties of all God's humble children, even though 
each required a planet to himself. 

But mind and matter are, and must ever 
remain to man wholly separate and distinct, 
and he cannot confound them without self- 
contradiction ; and the confusion of Life, and 
Mind, and of Law and Cause are mere 
cloudy contrivances to hide this self-con- 



272 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 6. 

tradiction. Matter is the instrument of 
mind, and every man who speaks, is at some 
time or other compelled to admit and ac- 
knowledge this truth, in order to distinguish 
between himself and his body, between the 
ego and the non ego, between the part of 
himself which can be, and the part which 
cannot be separated from consciousness and 
conscience. There is that something, and the 
man who says it is matter, merely desires to 
call A and not A-by the same name in the 
same discussion. In short, lie is a logical 
shuffler. He may do this unconsciously, and 
often does so through bad habit ; more often 
perhaps through bad habits of thinking, than 
through any conscious dishonesty of mind ; 
but the fact remains, and cannot be gainsayed, 
that materialism and Pantheism are mere 
verbal shuffles; an endeavour to call the 
thinking thing and the ?i0?2-thinking thing by 
the same word. 

If any man admits that there is a thinking 
thing, and also a non-thinking thing, then 
he is a mere verbal shuffler if he is a ma- 
terialist or a Pantheist. But of course he 



C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 273 

may be subject to what we may call word- 
blindness, and may be, and ought to be in that 
case, an object of affectionate pity for such a 
deprivation of light. " If the light that be 
within be darkness, how great is that dark- 
ness." We can, or ought in such case, to 
pity and pray for him. 

But there must always be many men also, 
who hold inconsistent opinions; men in whom 
moral feelings are superior to their logical in- 
stinct. These men will admit the premises, 
or not be able to see their way out of the pre- 
mises, but yet will refuse to draw the logical 
conclusion, because it contradicts their moral 
sense. We wish to speak with sincere respect 
of all three, when we say, that Sir John 
Herschel seems to us to stand in this position 
between Dr. Whewell and Mr. Mill. He throws 
the weight of his authority first into the scale 
of Mr Mill's premises and logical principles, 
and then, afterwards, into the scale of Dr. 
WhewelPs conclusions. We did not happen 
to meet with his observations till this essay 
was written ; but we cannot reconcile light and 
darkness on authority. We cannot do better 

N 5 



274 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §7. 

than conclude this chapter, by referring to 
what Sir J. Herschel says. 

(7.) Sir J. Herschel on Law and Cause, and 
Induction and Deduction. — When it is said by 
this great astronomer, confirming some of Mr. 
Mill's logical lucubrations, that " the inves- 
tigation of truth is to be distinguished from 
the mere interpretation of a formula," That 
all truth is obtained " by reasoning from par- 
ticulars to particulars;" in short, by induction, 
or by Baconian, rather than by Aristotelean 
logic. We answer simply that it is not, and we 
have ventured to take issue on this logical 
question, and say that no truth whatever can 
be arrived at by induction or arguing, from 
particulars to particulars; that it is con- 
founding truth with convenience and utility 
to call conclusions by induction truths. 
It may suit loose talkers, and rule of thumb 
practicians, to speak of inductive truths ; but 
truth is too high and pure a word to be thus 
confounded with that inductive guess work, 
which some new and more careful observation 
or experiment may at any time overturn and 
blow to the winds as a falsity. And we say 



C. ix., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 275 

that all truth is the strict interpretation of a 
formula, and that our certainty depends alto- 
gether on the certainty of the original axioms 
and principles from which the truth can be 
strictly deduced. It is, we say, confounding 
truth and error, to confound these two things, 
deductive truths, which are necessarily true, 
if the principles or first assumptions from 
which they are deduced, are true and neces- 
sary; with inductive guess work, though such 
guess work is very frequently called inductive 
truths. Do we therefore undervalue induc- 
tion, or the Baconian method of investigating 
the wonders of the universe ? we say nay ! 
we rather establish it, by placing it on its 
proper foundation, as. merely provisional ex- 
planations, till better can be devised and ob- 
served ; thus encouraging the utmost care, 
and examination, and observation, and expe- 
riment, not only at first, but over and over 
again. We say that it is absurd and in- 
consistent, and unworthy of a philosopher 
and astronomer, to call induction " the inves- 
tigation of truth," and at the same time to 
say, that " it must he at once admitted that no 



276 PHILOSOPHY ; OR. [C. ix., §7. 

conclusion from inductive reasoning, i.e., from 
the observed to the unobserved, can enjoy 
more than a provisional security" l What do 
men mean by truth enjoying a provisional 
security? truth with a provisional security 
only ! that is not truth at all ; yet this is the 
only kind of truth possessed by every conclu- 
sion, by induction, according to both Sir 
J. Herschel and Mr. Mill. It may do for 
ordinary life and practical matters to talk in 
this loose manner, but surely it is time that 
such language was banished from the domains 
of science, and from the writings of philoso- 
phers. Calling such provisional guess work 
truth, is confounding truth and falsehood. It 
is a gross abuse of language wholly unworthy 
of searchers after truth, and it leads directly 
to that materialistic idol worship which con- 
founds law and cause, and life and mind. 

The same great astronomer who thus, at 
one time, lends the sanction of his high name 
to the illogical trash contained in Mr. Mill's 
logic, speaking of it as " one of the greatest 

1 Sir John Herschel's "Essays," Review of Quetelet, 
p. 366. 



C.ix.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 277 

steps yet made in the philosophy of logic, 
almost a discovery," feels as strongly as I do 
the shocking absurdities to which it leads, and 
whilst he is thus deluded and hoodwinked by 
the verbal skill of the logician, yet neverthe- 
less starts back from the final moral preci- 
pice, and rejects the necessary conclusion to 
which Mr. Mill's philosophy and logic lead the 
reason. He is pleased with the elevation by 
Mr. Mill, of the idol Induction, though he 
refuses to be absolutely chained to its car, 
or to throw his own moral existence beneath 
its wheels. We cannot, perhaps, do better 

than conclude with Sir J. Herschel's own 

i 
observations on another occasion, showing the 

hesitation of the philosopher, and the confu- 
sion that he feels about the words law and 
cause, at the same time that he rejects the 
immoral conclusion which we have been con- 
tending against. We did not meet with his 
observations till this work was written, but 
they afford a full apology and satisfactory 
reason for attempting a " careful analysis 
of the widest of all human generalizations," 
of which Sir J. Herschel clearly perceived 



278 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §7. 

the necessity, and towards which careful 
analysis we trust we have made in this essay, 
some few effectual steps. 
He says, 1 

" It is at least high time that philosophers, both physical 
and others, should come to some nearer agreement than 
appears to prevail as to the meaning they intend to convey 
in speaking of Causes and Causation. On the one hand we 
are told that the grand object of physical inquiry is to ex- 
plain the phenomena of nature by referring them to their 
Causes ; on the other, that the inquiry into causes is alto- 
gether vain and futile, and that science has no concern but 
with the discovery of Laws. Which of these is the truth ? 
Whichever view we may take, one thing is certain — the 
extreme inconvenience of such a state of language. This 
can only be reformed by a careful analysis of the widest of 
all human generalizations — establishing a rational classifi- 
cation and nomenclature. So long as uncertainty in this 
respect is suffered to prevail, so long will this unseemly 
contradiction subsist, and not only prejudice the cause of 
science in the eyes of mankind, but create disunion of feel- 
ing, and give rise to accusations and recriminations on the 
score of principle among its cultivators. 

"The evil I complain of becomes yet more grievous when 
the idea of Law is brought so prominently forward, as not 
merely to throw into the background that of cause, but 
almost to thrust it out of view altogether — as when we are 
told, for example, that the successive appearance of races of 
organised beings on earth, and their disappearance to give 
place to others, which geology teaches us, is a result of some 
certain law of development in virtue of which an unbroken 
chain of gradually exalted organization from the crystal to 
the globule, and thence through successive stages of the 
polypus, the mollusk, the insect, the fish, the reptile, the 

1 Address to British Association, " Essays," p. 674. 



C. ix., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 279 

bird, and the beast, up to the monkey and the man (nay, 
for aught we know, even to the angel), has been, or remains 
to be evolved. Surely, when we hear such a theory, the 
natural human craving after causes, capable in some con- 
ceivable way of giving rise to such changes and transforma- 
tions of organ and intellect — causes why the development 
at different parts of its progress should divaricate into dif- 
ferent lines — causes, at all events, intermediate between the 
steps of the development — becomes importunate. And 
when nothing is offered to satisfy this craving but loose and 
vague reference to favourable circumstances of climate, 
food and general situation, which no experience has ever 
shown to convert one species into another; who is there 
who does not at once perceive that such a theory is in no 
respect more explanatory than that would be which simply 
asserted a miraculous intervention at every successive step 
of that unknown series of events, by which the earth has 
been alternately peopled and dispeopled of its denizens ? 

"A law may be a rule of action, but it is not action. The 
Great First Agent may lay down a rule of action for him- 
self, and that rule may become known to man by observa- 
tion of its uniformity : but constituted as our minds are, 
and having that conscious knowledge of causation which is 
forced upon us by the reality of the distinction between in- 
tending a thing and doing it, we can never substitute the 
Rule for the Act. Either directly or through delegated 
agency, whatever takes place is not merely willed but done. 
The transition from an inanimate crystal to a globule ca- 
pable of such endless organic and intellectual development 
is as great a step — as unexplained a one — as unintelligible 
to us, and, in any human sense of the word, as miraculous 
as the immediate creation and introduction upon earth of 
every species and every individual would be. . Take these 
amazing facts of geology which way we will, we must resort 
elsewhere than to a mere speculative law of development 
for their explanation." 

(8.) God in Everything but Evil Minds. — 



280 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix,§8. 

We trust that we have made it abundantly evi- 
dent that it is a most transparent verbal shuffle, 
the usual materialistic shuffle, to attempt to 
confound law with cause, and life with mind. 
The ordinary use of the words clearly ac- 
knowledges the difference of the things them- 
selves ; and the men who strive to confound 
them, either have no meanings whatever to 
their words, or are unable to give any intel- 
ligible explanation of their meanings. They 
simply desire to call A and not-A, by the 
same name in the same discussion. We have 
shown that Mind is the product of power, 
wisdom, and goodness; that Cause is the pro- 
duct of parties, action, and mind ; that law 
is the product of words and Order, and there- 
fore, only our verbal rule adopted with provi- 
sional security until we can discover and lay 
down a better rule ; and that Life is the pro- 
duct of all those, at least seven unknown and 
mysterious words or actions set forth in order 
at page 215, of all of which man is profoundly 
ignorant. We cannot tell in the least why 
any one single living being selects and absorbs 
the food fitted to prolong its life; and absorp- 



C. ix., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 281 

Hon is only the first and simplest of those 
seven living actions having not the least 
reference whatever to the power, wisdom, and 
goodness of the human mind. 

We are, therefore, by our ignorance, com- 
pelled to find and acknowledge "God in every- 
thing," living or not living, save only and except 
in the wicked, fallen free will of sinful man, 
in wicked MINDS of which man is one example. 
That is the sole exception known to us, where 
God's power, wisdom, and goodness is not 
universally displayed, at every moment, and 
in every action or act of things and beings. 
Is there anything in the least superstitious in 
such a view of nature and of man ? We say 
no ! It is the doctrine of the Bible and the 
doctrine of true reason. In Him we live and 
move, and have our being ; and the most 
worthy object of each man's existence is to 
strive to restore, the Divine Image, the King- 
dom of God within the human souls, first of 
himself and then of all those within his verbal 
influence. But what possible reason exists 
for thinking MAN the only evil MIND ? 



282 * PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.x. 



CHAPTER X. 

CONCLUSION : TRUTH AND NECESSITY. 

As I look back over what I have written, in 
order to conclude this essay on first princi- 
ples ; and to take leave of the reader, with a 
short summary of my doctrine ; it appears to 
me, that the words which will give most 
offence, and to some of the most worthy of 
those readers who have followed me thus far, 
is the positive declaration that all truth — i.e., 
all human truth — is verbal truth, words and 
nothing but WORDS ! " Rather than believe 
that," I hear some reader exclaim, " I hardly 
wish to be considered on the same side with 
the author of this Book ! All human truth is 
not verbal truth !" Gentle reader, for if thou 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 283 

hast read so far as this page of this volume, 
without being able to clearly explain this 
verbal puzzle to yourself, I feel convinced that 
thou art destined to be carried to thy fathers 
in the shape of a young or an old woman, pos- 
sibly a scientific old woman ! Gentle reader, 
of what are we speaking? If thou art so 
faithful as to say of God's truth; I answer 
well! And is not God's truth, His moral 
truth contained, as I believe and say, between 
the two boards of a book called the Bible, in 
so many words, which gentle and simple, and 
wise and ignorant, are almost alike able to 
understand, and to apply to the improvement 
of their moral qualities? 1 That volume is 
just a volume of words, for the most part 

1 We have the authority of the learning of the Regius 
Professor of Greek at Oxford, for saying, that which I most 
heartily believe, that the thoughtful, intelligent, English 
reader, with his English Bible, and nothing else, in his 
hands, can attain as accurate and thorough understanding 
of the meaning of the original as the man with a roomful 
of commentators. For almost all, or, in fact, the whole 
substance of what we know about either the Old or the 
New Testament, their writers and their words, and the 
persons and things, or stories they describe or report, is 
contained in the volume itself! ("Essays and Reviews," 
p. 384.) One almost forgives the follies contained in this 
notorious volume for the frank confession of this one truth. 



284 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. 

written by humble and ignorant men, and for 
the humble and the ignorant ; and each man, 
thank God, can now please his conscience 
what meanings he will attach to those words 
in his own mind, and as he shall answer to 
his God and my God. 

Therefore, I sav that the whole of God's 
revealed truth on earth is words, and nothing 
else but words. Do not be afraid of this 
truth ; but rather go to your knees, and pray 
Him to enable you to understand and put a 
true meaning in your own mind on the true 
words you have received, by His Providence, 
which made you an English child and re- 
sponsible for the blessings of English child- 
hood, and English manhood or womanhood. 

But if thou art " an advanced thinker," or 
some scientific old woman, still involved in this 
verbal puzzle, and shalt say that the truth we 
are speaking of is in one or both our minds ; 
or in tilings themselves, and not in the words 
merely, whether of the original authors, or of 
the translators, either of our sacred books, or 
of any or all our books of Science ; then I 
again agree with you, that according to the 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 285 

usual convention of language made by all 
nations, savage and civilized, we are speaking 
of the truth of minds and of the truth of 
things themselves, and not merely of the 
truth of words. But that convention is, I 
say, and have proved, founded in manifest 
and clearly exhibited error. 

The truth of minds is clearly beyond the 
possibility of your knowledge and my know- 
ledge. One mind alone can be known to each 
of us — our own mind, the mind within ; 
for " no man knoweth the things of a man 
save the spirit of man, which is in him." 
The truth of things themselves is also beyond 
the possibility of your knowledge and my 
knowledge ; for what we know are only the 
pulses and vibrations of each of our own 
nervous systems, and things as they are in 
themselves are utterly beyond man's ken. 
There remains, therefore, only the truth of 
words, and with that we must humbly be 
contented, and feel our vast responsibility for 
that " fire, that world of iniquity, the human 
tongue," which at times " defileth the w 7 hole 



286 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. 

body, and setteth on fire the course of nature, 
and is itself set on fire of hell." 

This is the law, the constitution, the essence 
of our human nature ; and composed as Man 
is, of mind and body, man can possess verbal 
truth only. Let us call it Mathematical Truth. 

The truths of minds and of things, whether 
contained in the volume of God's inspiration 
or in any volume of human Science, consists of 
signs and symbols, words,- and words only. 
The minds and things themselves are beyond 
our knowledge, and ever must remain so while 
our minds are clothed with bodies. Our 
greatest discoveries, our so-called laws of 
nature, are mere verbal guesses at truth, 
" with provisional security only," until we 
can find and adopt better and more apt words 
and symbols, in order to express the vibra- 
tions and pulsations of our hearts and minds, 
of our feelings and our intellect, guided by our 
will, as each man contemplates with humility 
the wondrous scene without, and the more 
wonderful scene within his own breast. 

The best established position in all philo- 
sophy is, that things as they are in themselves 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 287 

are unknowable. The external Thing pro- 
duces vibrations of the incarrying nerves, 
which end in a Thought ; the Thought pro- 
duces vibrations of the outcarrying nerves, 
which end in a Word : and the only part of 
the whole process, which can possibly be 
compared or discussed by mankind, is the 
Word which is produced by the unknowable 
Thought. But some may say, words are 
external things, and, therefore, also unknow- 
able. But this is a mistake ; for words differ 
from all other external things. Words are 
the medium between A's thoughts and B's 
thoughts, and pass into both minds them- 
selves ; and though the thoughts cannot be 
compared, yet the words can be compared and 
registered, or altered and returned from B 
to A. 

Whenever, therefore, A says that he is 
speaking about things themselves, or that " his 
words are the names of things themselves," 
however justified he may be by the erroneous 
convention of ordinary language, he is talking 
absolute nonsense ; he cannot possibly speak 
of things themselves, but only of his own 



288 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. 

thoughts or ideas of things themselves. So 
whenever B says that he is speaking about 
general human idea's, or that " his words are 
the names of general scientific ideas — i. e., of 
the ideas of A, &c. — he also, however justified 
by the same convention, is talking nonsense 
to others; he can speak of his own ideas, but 
he cannot possibly speak of A's ideas, but 
only of A's words for his ideas — i. e., of human 
words. Consequently, C can only set them 
right, if at all, by establishing some new 
convention about words, and endeavouring to 
induce them to use their words with greater 
accuracy and precision, or as he, C, says the 
words ought to be used. 1 

But it follows clearly from this position, 
that all words are logically, at the same 
time, Things, Thoughts, and signs themselves. 
I say that words are logically the Things 
and Thoughts themselves, not merely signs 
themselves. Men of course profess to dis- 
tinguish between words and Things and 

1 In this case A is Mr. Mill, B is Dr. Whewell, and the 
reader must judge how far this book is entitled to the 
position of C. Let it be spoken with all humility. 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 289 

words and Thoughts in speaking and writing ; 
they profess to speak or write of Thoughts 
and Things, and not of words, but as it is 
clear to demonstration that men cannot in 
truth have any knowledge, i. e., they cannot 
possibly speak or write any true words con- 
cerning Things or thoughts as they are in 
themselves external to each man's own mind ; 
and as each man's own internal thoughts can- 
not possibly be truly known or spoken of by 
any other man than himself — Man can think, 
but not speak about things; he can speak only 
about his own thoughts, and can reason only 
about words ; but he can by words teach his 
fellow-man to think truly about thoughts, 
things, and words. 

In short, if external things themselves are 
unknowable, we cannot make any TRUE signs 
of such unknowable somethings. If my own 
thoughts are the only things really and truly 
known, then all true words can be only signs 
of my own thoughts, and not of external 
things, or the external thoughts of other men. 
Hence, although we all admit that knowledge 
requires, and is produced by, or is a combi- 





290 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. 

nation of, Thoughts, Things, and words, yet 
the only part of, or factor in knowledge, in 
which men can possibly agree, or which they 
can discuss, is the words which express the 
knowledge. The words, therefore, are not 
merely the signs of the thoughts and things in 
human knowledge, but are the thoughts and 
things themselves in knowledge, L e., so far as 
thoughts and things can be truly known by 
any man who logically understands the words. 
The words are the knowledge so far as man 
can know it, and they are logically the 
thoughts and things he says he knows, so 
far as he can truly know them. 

When, for example, we say, the sun is a 
hot body, we can affirm, and are affirming 
nothing about the sun in itself, or about hot 
bodies in themselves, but assert merely the 
verbal identity in our own individual mind of 
the thought of the sun, and the thought of hot 
bodies ; and we invite our fellow-men to try 
and get the same thoughts into their minds, 
and to use the same words to express them. 
Any man who thinks or says that he does 
or can affirm, in any case, anything more 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 291 

than this mere verbal proposition, contradicts 
himself and contradicts the best established 
position of all philosophy, viz., that things 
and thoughts in themselves, as they are ex- 
ternal to each man's mind, are wholly un- 
knowable. 

Of course we cannot prevent men contra- 
dicting themselves. We cannot prevent a 
man first admitting the truth of philosophy, 
that things, as they are in themselves, are un- 
knowable, and then afterwards asserting that 
he can give us some knowledge by his words 
of the things themselves, and not merely of 
his words for his own thoughts of the things. 
We cannot prevent men thus contradicting 
themselves, we can only expose the contra- 
diction when we discover it, and as well as 
we are able in words. Thus, when Mr. Mill 
says and admits that " The idealists have es- 
tablished their case," and also savs that his 
words are " the names of things themselves, 
and not of our ideas of things," he contradicts 
himself, and is in confusion about his words, 
and thoughts and things, and does not see 
their true relations to each other; and so 

2 



292 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. 

he contradicts at one time what he admits at 
another time. Either the idealists have not 
established their case ; or words are not the 
names of things themselves, but only the 
names of each man's own individual thoughts 
about things. This is as clear as the sun at 
noonday, in true words and true logic, and so 
we leave it. 

But assuming that we have proved this ; 
then it is equally clear, that every word is at 
the same time, in the knowledge of truth, a 
sign, a thought, and a Thing itself. The 
word sun, for example, 10 a sign of my 
thought of the sun ; it is 9 also, the general 
human thought itself of the sun to all those 
men who agree with me to use the word for 
the purpose of human communication on the 
subject of the sun ; and it is also logically the 
external thing itself, so called by all men, and 
believed by all men to exist ; in short, the sun 
is the sun itself. I say the word is thing itself 
in logical or verbal truth, i. e., in the only 
truth which man can know. We are speaking 
about the ivord, and thinking about the thing ; 
we are not speaking about the thing, but about 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 293 

our WORD for the thing. It is merely mental 
confusion and ignorance of philosophy and of 
the true limits of human knowledge, that pre- 
vents men from admitting this logical truth, 
viz., that man's words are, to every man who 
understands them, at one and the same time 
logically signs, Thoughts, and things them- 
selves. 

Of course, in affirming this I am affirming 
nothing about thoughts and things external 
to man's mind, for that is impossible; but I 
am affirming only a verbal, a logical truth, 
an undeniable truth, a truth of words which 
all men must admit or contradict themselves. 

God has placed man's body as an impassable 
barrier between man's mind and all other ex- 
ternal bodies and all other human minds, and 
has thereby effectually reduced man's know- 
ledge of truth to words only. The vibrations 
of my nerves and the vibrations of your nerves 
cannot possibly be compared ; but our words 
can be compared, for they are our own crea- 
tions, and exist in both our minds, and are 
perceptible to both our senses. But it is cer- 
tainly of no use, and very absurd, our pre- 



294 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cx. 

tending to know that which God has made it 
impossible for man to know, viz., the truth 
as to thoughts and things external to our 
minds and bodies. Let us, therefore, become 
humble, and be satisfied to know truly our 
own thoughts and our own words, and feel 
ourselves responsible to God for the truths 
of our minds and for the signs we make to 
express them truly to our fellow-men. 

I have, then, shown, that as ordinary lan- 
guage contradicts this truth of philosophy, 
a new convention for all scientific language is 
necessary ; and I have demonstrated that all 
men admit words to be numbers, and that 
words are not simple numbers, but compound 
numbers, or products, and I then have traced 
all human truth and certainty to its foundation 
in arithmetical NUMBERS. 

This theory is clear, distinct, and demon- 
strated by deduction from a first principle, 
which no man who speaks can possibly deny. 

I have given two great examples ; one the 
highest truth of mind, the other one of the 
highest truths of Bodies — viz., the Doctrine 
of the Trinity and Dalton's Law of Definite 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 295 

Proportions. Both are verbal truths only, but 
are necessary, never-ceasing, aud undeniable 
truths. I repeat, that men who use the 
words, God, knowledge, person, factor, 
must either contradict themselves or admit 
the truth, the verbal truth of unity in Trinity, 
and Trinity in unity ; for self-knowledge, ac- 
cording to man's nature, necessarily implies 
three distinct things in one thing : how com- 
bined we know not, even in the least know- 
ledge we possess ; and, of course, we are 
infinitely more incapable of knowing, in refer- 
ence to our knowledge of the nature of the 
First Cause of all things. Each man feels 
and knows in his own mind the clear dis- 
tinction between emotion, intellect, and will. 
Each of these has a mental activity, a life of 
its own, and is in itself a mind ; but how they 
are combined into one human mind we know 
not, and the nature of God, His Emotions, 
Intellect, and Will, must be infinitely more 
incomprehensible to man than man's own 
nature to himself. 

But, nevertheless, the verbal truth of the 
Trinity is strictly deducible from the two 



296 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. 

assumptions of a God and of knowledge, such 
as man can conceive and know. It is the law 
and constitution of our human mind, and 
unless we verbally contradict ourselves, we 
cannot either deny that there are three 
persons, units, in the Godhead, or that there 
are three factors in knowledge. Men, of 
course, can verbally deny both truths, but 
if they attempt to prove what they say, 
they must contradict themselves, and call A 
and not-A, by the same name. They are 
obliged to say that thinking and not-thinking 
are the same thing, which is contradictory ; 
or, as we have proved, that all knowledge is 
a threefold Unity; and, therefore, all self- 
knowledge is also a threefold Unity ; the three 
factors in self-knowledge must be personce of 
self, or otherwise they must say that self is not 
self, which also is contradictory. This truth, 
therefore, is a necessary, never-ceasing, and 
undeniable truth. 

But deep and mysterious as is the doctrine 
of the Trinity, and necessary as it is to the 
truthful, inner, moral convictions of man, it is 
still only a verbal truth. JSTo man can say more 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 297 

than that men must and ought so to think and 
speak of the Deity. No man, perhaps, would 
be so presumptuous as to say, or even venture 
to think, that he has attained any knowledge 
of the real nature of his Creator, because he 
has learnt both from revelation and from 
reason to speak and use certain words for the 
moral building up of his own mind, after the 
manner of the Bible, or in the words of 
Trinitarian Christianity. He will humbly 
try to use the verbal truth in the way his 
Bible teaches him ; to pray for the gift of the 
Holy Spirit, to worship the Father through 
the Son in spirit and in truth. But the nature 
of God still remains wholly unknown, except 
in words, signs, and symbols only. 

The other example I have given is Dalton's 
Law of Definite Proportions in the Constitu- 
tion of Matter. 

This I have demonstrated is strictly dedu- 
cible a priori from the word atom, or ulti- 
mate particle. Grant me the word atom, or 
ultimate particle, as applicable to every kind 
of matter or chemical substance, and you 
have granted me Dalton's law of definite pro- 



298 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.x. 

portions as a necessary, never-ceasing, and 
undeniable truth, unless you choose to con- 
tradict yourself, as I have proved above, 
p. 207. 

But, of course, every man may refuse, if 
he chooses to grant either the existence of 
God, or the existence of knowledge, or the 
existence of atoms or ultimate particles of 
matter. And if he holds his tongue about 
the Deity and knowledge, he is safe from 
being proved self-contradictory. But if he 
persists in talking, and affirms anything 
whatever, then we can, as I have done, Chap. 
I. and II., prove him self-contradictory for 
denying the existence of knowledge ; and also 
self-contradictory for denying that knowledge 
has three factors ; and also self-contradictory 
for denying the three factors or persons of the 
Deity, whose self-knowledge he admits. So, 
of course, if he ventures to talk about par- 
ticles of matter, or chemical Bodies, he must 
either affirm the infinite divisibility of every 
particle of matter, or grant us Dalton's law as 
a necessary and never-ceasing truth, or, 
otherwise, he contradicts himself; a thing 



C. x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 299 

which I have shown it is very easy for word- 
puzzled logicians and advanced thinkers to do 
without their being at all aware of it, amidst 
the confusion of ordinary language. 

The remedy which I have proposed for 
what Sir J. Herschel justly describes as an 
" extremely inconvenient state of language," 
is a very simple one, viz., that men of science 
shall give us always a list of the indecom- 
posable factors of the words they discuss. 

I have shown that every word is either an 
indecomposable word like electricity, or che- 
mical affinity, or polarity, or organisation, or 
absorption, or secretion, or all those words 
expressing fundamental facts in nature, be- 
yond which we have not penetrated ; or else 
the word is composed of factors, of which a 
man of science who writes on the subject 
ought to give a list, as good a list as he can, 
or hold his tongue about the word, and the 
thing it represents. I have endeavoured to 
give several examples of the factors which go 
to compose my words, or thoughts, or things, 
KNOWLEDGE, NUMBER, TIME, SPACE, LIFE, 

MIND, CAUSE, &c, and until better and more 



300 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. 

reasonable factors are named, I submit them 
to the judgment of my countrymen as more 
carefully than hitherto defining these very 
abstract words, ideas, or things. 

All true words, however, are from God 
alone. Words without understanding are 
bodies without a soul, are altogether dead. 
Verbal truth, living truth, therefore, can only 
be words understood. Your understanding 
can never be mine, or any other understanding 
than your own, and for it, you alone are 
answerable, and no one else. If your under- 
standing be truthful, it is full of truth ; but 
if you think that you can possess truth without 
Truth possessing your understanding, you 
know nothing yet as you ought to know it, 
you have not yet acquired one truthful 
thought, you have not yet filled with MIND 
one truthful word. Your words are dead, whilst 
you think they live. Your mind is darkened 
whilst you say, we see. God is light and God 
is truth, and He is as much light and truth in 
discussing and understanding the verbal 
truths of external nature, as He is light and 
truth in discussing or understanding the 



C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 301 

verbal truths of your own internal existence. 
A direct reference of verbal truth to Him, 
and Him alone, is as much necessary or as 
never-ceasing in the one case as in the other. 
It has been said, that " the laws of nature 
are the thoughts of nature, and these are the 
thoughts of God ;" but our laws of nature are 
our thoughts expressed in our words, and 
these words are man's creations, and can have 
only temporary and provisional certainty to 
aid and fix man's thoughts ; but man's 
thoughts expressed in man's words, and 
strictly deduced by man's reason, have all the 
certainty, and all the truth of the original 
words, signs, or symbols, from which they are 
strictly deduced, and so far as the original 
words and thoughts are necessary and truth- 
ful, man's words so deduced are Truth. A law 
of nature expressed in man's words, and 
strictly deduced from some original and ne- 
cessary thoughts and words, have all the 
necessity of such original and necessary 
thoughts and words, and no further, and no 
otherwise. The man who denies such neces- 
sity, or denies such truth, denies his own 



302 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. 

existence, denies and obscures the truth which 
God has given to man. He denies the image 
of God within him. 

Necessity, therefore, or never-ceasingness, 
as applied to truth, can only apply, of 
course, to verbal truths; and moreover, can 
never exceed the necessity of the first 
verbal assumptions, from which the truths 
are deduced. But as all truth resolves itself 
into verbal truth, reason and revelation both 
concur in declaring the vast, the unutterable 
importance of human words. Reason tells us, 
as we submit we have proved beyond dispute 
in this work, that all human truth is words, 
and God has most clearly revealed this truth 
to man, that "by thy words thou shalt be 
justified, and by thy words thou shalt be 
condemned ; " " That for every idle word 
that men do speak, they shall give account in 
the Day of Judgment." That the reader may 
clearly see, learn, and be morally strengthened 
in this great truth, confirmatory of the truth 
we have been asserting, that all the truths of 
minds and bodies known amongst man- 
kind, all resolve themselves into truth of 



C. x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 303 

human words, and words only; that the 
reader may hold this fast, and feeling the 
emptiness of mere human scientific truth, 
may be thereby lead to follow more and more 
after " righteousness, godliness, faith, love, 
patience, meekness, and to fight the good 
fight of faith, and to lay hold on eternal life," 
offered him freely through Jesus Christ, is 
the final prayer, as it has been the main 
object of this book. Farewell ! 



THE END. 



F. Shoberlj Printer, 37, Dean Street, Soho, W. 



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